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WOMAN IN FRANCE 

/ 



DURIX& THE 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



WOMAN IN TRANCE 



DURING THE 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

/ 

/ 



BY 



JULIA KAVANAGH, 

AUTHOR OF "MADELEINE, A TALE OF AUVERGNE," ETC. 



J 



PHILADELPHIA: 
LEA AND BLANCHARD. 

1850. 



.5. 



2-7 



PHILADELPHIA: 
C. SHERMAN, PRINTER. 



CONTENTS 



PERIOD THE FIRST.— THE REGENCY, 

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

PAGE 

Preliminary Remarks — State of French Society at the close of Louis 
the Fourteenth's Reign, - . . . , . . ,13 

CHAPTER I. 

The Regent ; his Court and his Family, . . . =28 

CHAPTER II. 
Madame du Maine — The Society of Sceaux— -The Cellamare Con- 



spiracy, 



39 



CHAPTER III. 

The Countess of Verrue — Madame de Lambert — State of French 
Society during the Regency and the Period immediately following 
it — The Nun Tencin — Madame de Prie, ...... 55 



CHAPTER IV. 
Madame de Ferriol — Mademoiselle Aisse", 65 



Vlll CONTENTS. 



PERIOD THE SECOND— REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Retrospective View of the Regency — The First Bureaux d'Esprit — 
Madame de la Popeliniere — Madame de Tencin, .... 75 

CHAPTER II. 

The Court — Louis XV. — His Mistresses — Madame de Mailly — Madame 
de Vintimille — Madame de Chateauroux, ..... 84 

CHAPTER III. 
Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet, ... ... 96 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Philosophers — Literary Societies — Madame D'Epinay — Rousseau, 118 

CHAPTER V. 

General Aspect of Society — Power of Woman — Madame du Defland, 127 

CHAPTER VI. 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, . . . . . . . . 140 

CHAPTER VII. 

Madame Geoffrin — Influence of the Bureaux d'Esprit, . . . 152 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Madame de Pompadour — Her Political Power and General Influence 
— Madame du Marchais and the Economists — Madame du Barry — 
Death of Louis XV., . . . 162 



CONTENTS. IX 

PERIOD THE THIRD.— REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 

CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette — Their Popularity — Ill-Feeling 
against the Queen — Change in the Spirit of Society, . . . 181 

CHAPTER II. 

Decline of the Bureaux d'Esprit — Mare"chale of Luxembourg — ■ 
Madame de Beauharnais — Madame Necker — Germaine Necker, . 191 

CHAPTER III. 

Madame de G-enlis— The " Order of Perseverance" — Madame de Mon- 
tesson — Franklin — Death of Yoltaire and Rousseau, . . . 204 

CHAPTER IV. 

Unpopularity of Marie-Antoinette — Favours shown to Madame de 
Polignac — Her Society — Ill-Feeling between Madame de Genlis 
and the Queen, . . 214 

CHAPTER V. 

Confused State of French Society — The Diamond Necklace — Ministers 
favoured by the Queen — Madame de Stael — Madame de Condorcet, 224 



PERIOD THE FOURTH.— THE REVOLUTION. 

CHAPTER I. 
The Revolution and Marie-Antoinette, 235 

CHAPTER II. 
Marie-Antoinette and the Fall of the Monarchy, .... 245 



x CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 



PAGE 



The Engraver's Daughter, Madame Roland, 258 

CHAPTER IV. 
Madame Roland and the Girondists, 270 

CHAPTER V. 
Charlotte Corday, 281 

CHAPTER VI. 

Marie-Antoinette's Captivity, Trial, and Death, . . . .293 

CHAPTER VII. 
Madame Roland's Captivity, Trial, and Death, 304 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Woman under the Reign of Terror, .314 

CHAPTER IX. 
Woman in the Prisons, 331 

CHAPTER X. 

Theresa Cabarrus — Fall of Robespierre — Reaction — Past and Actual 
State of Society — Madame de Stael — Close, 350 



AUTHORS CONSULTED, 



D'Abrantes, Madame 

Afsse\ Mademoiselle 

Albert, Mademoiselle 

Alison 

Alletz 

D'Angouleme, Duchesse 

Argenson 

Barante ■ 

Barrere 

Beauchamps 

Beaumarchais 

Berryer 

Bourmiseaux 

Brougham 

Burton 

Campan, Madame 

Capefigue 

Carlyle 

Chateaubriand 

Chateauroux, Madame de 

Clairon, Mademoiselle 

Cle>y 

Colet, Madame 

Custine 

Dangeau 

Delandine 

Desmoulins 

Desodoards 

Dessales-Regis 

Dubois 

Deffand, Madame du 

Dulaure 



Dumont 

Dumouriez 

D'Epinay, Madame 

Franklin 

Garat 

Genlis, Madame de 

Georgel 

Gibbon 

Gozlan 

Grimm 

Guadet 

Guillon 

Hausset, Madame du 

Histoire de la Revolution. 

Lacretelle 

Lamartine 

Lambert, Madame de 

Langon 

Lespinasse, Mademoiselle de 

L6vis 

Longchamp3 

Louvet 

Maine, Madame du 

Marivaux 

Marmontel 

Meilhan 

Memoires sur Mirabeau 

Mercier 

Michaud 

Mignet 

Mirabeau, A Life History 

Montgaillard 



XII 



AUTHORS CONSULTED. 



Musset 

Necker, Madame 

Necker de Saussure, Madame 

Prevost 

Proussinale 

Prudhomme 

Eiouffe 

Rochejaquelein, Madame de la 

Rousseau 

Saint-Simon 

Saint e-Beuve 

Scklosser 

Segur 

Se"gur, De 

Smythe 



Soulavie 

Souvestre 

Souvenirs, de R. D. G. 

Staal, Madame de 

Stael, Madame de 

Tencin, Madame de 

Tkibeaudeau 

Thiers 

Toulongeon 

Villemain 

Voltaire 

Walpole 

Weber 

"Williams.. Helen-Maria 



WOMAN IN FRANCE, 

DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



PERIOD THE FIRST. 

THE REGENCY. 



INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 

Preliminary remarks. — State of French society at the close of Louis the Four- 
teenth's reign. 

In times still recent, in a nation celebrated for its power and 
greatness, and in an age which gave to thought a vast and magni- 
ficent, even though perilous, development, a series of most remark- 
able women exercised a power so extensive, and yet so complete, as 
to be unparalleled in the history of their sex. 

They ruled society, as women of the world ; the empire of letters, 
as patronesses of the fine arts ; the state, as favourites and advisers 
of kings. They gave the tone to feeling, philosophy, and thought. 
Their caprice made wars, and signed treaties of peace. They hast- 
ened the fall of a monarchy, and the outbreak of the greatest Re- 
volution of modern times. They could attempt to check or direct 
that Revolution in its rapid and fearful course ; they shared to the 
fullest extent its errors, its crimes, and its heroic virtues. They 
suffered from its proscriptions like men, because like men they had 
striven j and when their failing power seemed at its last ebb, it was 
still a woman who overthrew Robespierre, a woman who raised a 
solitary voice against the despotism of Napoleon. 

This power was not always pure or good : it was often corrupt in 
its source, evil and fatal in its results ; but it was power. Though 
the historians of the period have never fully or willingly acknow- 
2 



14 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ledged its existence, their silence cannot efface tbat which has been ; 
and without that rule of woman, so reluctantly recognized, many of 
their pages of statesman's policy, court intrigue, civil strife, or foreign 
war, need never have been written. To this remarkable feature of 
modern history, to the analysis of the power of Woman in France 
during the eighteenth century, the present work is devoted. 

T\ T e shall trace the progress of direct female influence, from the 
aged and severe Madame de Maintenon deserting the deathbed of 
Louis XIV. to the lovely and hapless Marie Antoinette ascending 
the scaffold of the Revolution. We shall mark Woman's social rule 
extending from princesses and favourites, like Madame du Maine and 
Madame de Pompadour, to literary and noble ladies like the nun 
Tencin, Madame du Chatelet, the mistress of Voltaire, and Madame 
du Deffand, the friend of Walpole. From these, again, we shall 
see it descending to the heroines of the Bourgeoisie and the Revo- 
lution, Madame Roland and Madame Tallien. 

It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that women exercised, to 
its fullest extent, the great and remarkable influence they always 
possessed in France. They were allowed no political rights, but 
society gave them the power denied by law. That power was para- 
mount in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It had far 
more reality and truth than the idolatrous homage they received 
during the Middle Ages. Woman was then a being to be idealized 
and illustrated by fervent strains and chivalrous deeds; but neither 
Paladin nor Troubadour submitted in reality to her abstract sway. 
Woman has seldom less true power than when the admiration and 
love of man are granted merely to her beauty and defenceless state. 
Such as it was, this influence tended, however, to modify the na- 
tional character; to which it imparted that chivalrous gallantry and 
elegance, not unmixed with frivolousness, by which it was long dis- 
tinguished. 

The progress of civilization, which raised the moral and intel- 
lectual standard of woman, naturally extended her power. Towards 
the close of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of a new era, we 
find her everywhere entering actively into the political and religious 
struggles which marked the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This 
influence was increased in France by the three queens regent, 
Catherine of Medici, Mary, her niece, and Anne of Austria. Wo- 
man now ostensibly took the lead in every intrigue. The wars of 
the Fronde, with Anne of Austria on one side, and on the other the 
haughty Mademoiselle de Montpensier, or the beautiful Duchess of 
Longueville, who made tools of Conde and Turenne, effectually dis- 
tracted the kingdom during the minority of Louis XIV. When 
peace had succeeded to those troubled times, the celebrated soirees 
of the Hotel Rambouillet ; presided over by the fair Julie d'An- 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

gennes, Mademoiselle de Scud^ri, Madame de Sevign6, and Madame 
de Lafayette, gave a new impulse to the literature of the day. Later 
still, the witty and accomplished, though profligate, Madame de 
Montespan, and her insinuating successor, Madame de Maintenon, 
can almost be said to have governed France under the name of the 
Grand Monarque. 

This power was the more important, that, for the greatest portion 
of his life, Louis XIV. completely ruled French society. His tastes 
for magnificence and war were the tastes of the nation. They gave 
to his government new power and new strength ; so that he could 
exclaim, with equal pride and truth, " L'etat c'est moi." This des- 
potic sway prepared, by its unity, the future greatness of France ; 
but it extinguished patriotism, by rendering the country subordinate 
to the sovereign's personal honour and glory. Each change of the 
monarch's mood altered the aspect of his court ; and, if he governed 
Versailles, Versailles governed France. It was, therefore, only 
through Louis himself that women could rule. The influence of his 
mistresses was personal, like their lover's government. Through 
him, these highly-born and accomplished, though not very virtuous 
ladies, impressed their own character and spirit on the times in 
which they lived. In order to please Mademoiselle de la Valliere, 
the chivalrous amusements of the Middle Ages were resumed at 
court ; satire and intrigue prospered under Madame de Montespan ; 
ascetism and rigid devotion marked the sway of Madame de Main- 
tenon. 

The opening of the eighteenth century, which gave more force 
and freedom to woman's power, also beheld the close of Louis 
XIV. 's reign. That long and imperious sway, which had united 
all the magnificence and glories of art to the most absolute despot- 
ism, was passing away in sadness and austerity. The couriers, 
who formerly brought tidings of victory won, now told Of heavy 
reverses, and lost battles. The nation, drained of its resources to 
satisfy one man's ambition and pride, was evidently on the brink 
of bankruptcy. The gay and royal revels of the court had van- 
ished, before vigils, fasts, and penitential gloom. More than mo- 
nastic silence and seclusion shrouded the splendours of Versailles. 
The king no longer listened to the stately tragedies of Racine, or to 
the gay comedies of Moliere, surrounded by a host of beautiful wo- 
men and courtly nobles. Apart, in a gloomy and retired chamber, 
he sat, between his confessor and the withered Madame de Mainte- 
non, a feeble, querulous, but still despotic, old man, who vainly 
sought to impart his own melancholy ascetism to France. 

The court and nation rebelled against the power to which they 
had submitted so long. Louis XIV. saw, with indignation and 
dismay, that his influence was no longer acknowledged; that, though 



16 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

he had grown penitent and devout, the world still remained uncon- 
verted, and chose to indulge in those follies of youth, over which 
he now mourned in his old age. Deep homage surrounded him 
still : but where was the reality of that homage ? An irrepressible 
longing for a new and younger reign was abroad. This spirit of 
innovation was odious to the old monarch; not only because it an- 
ticipated his death, but, still more, because it threatened to destroy 
the labours of his whole existence. He knew that the princes of the 
blood only waited his decease in order to assert their long-restrained 
freedom. His grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, the heir of his 
absolute power — a grave, religious prince, pupil of Fenelon — spoke 
of the rights of the people, and of the duties of monarchs. The 
duchess, his wife, a gay and graceful princess, hinted that the plea- 
sures of the new court would compensate for the gloom of the old 
one. The young Duke of Orleans, the future Regent of France, 
condemned to inactivity through the jealousy of his uncle, avenged 
himself by braving his power. Gathering around him a circle of 
licentious nobles, he carried on with them the grossest orgies, in 
which the names of the monarch and Madame de Maintenon were 
uttered with sarcasm and scorn. The Prince and Princess of Conti 
affected to treat with familiar freedom, the authors whom their in- 
dependence of thought and speech rendered obnoxious to the king. 
Defying the prejudice against authorship, the princess took the 
character of a literary woman.* Her sister, Madame du Maine, 
wife of the sovereign's eldest legitimized son, shunned the gloomy 
court of her father-in-law. She made her delightful residence at 
Sceaux, the resort of the wits of the day. A constant interchange 
of epigrams, madrigals, and poetical epistles, was carried on be- 
tween the guests and their princely hostess, who daily acted the 
comedies of Moliere and the tragedies of Racine with Baron the 
actor ; thus violating the strict etiquette introduced by Louis XIV. 
as the safeguard of royalty. 

The monarch vainly sought to check this spirit of weariness and 
ennui at his protracted reign. It pervaded even his own family 
circle. The eldest Princess of Conti, his daughter by Mademoiselle 
de la Valliere, ridiculed him and Madame de Maintenon in her 
private letters. Her sister, Mademoiselle de Nantes, Duchess of 
Bourbon, and celebrated, like her mother, Madame de Montespan, 
for her beauty and satirical wit, lamented, in petulant effusions, the 
fate of youth and beauty compelled to reside among the old pedants 
of an antiquated court. With more candour than charity, she ex- 
claimed : — 

* She translated into French, Pope's "Rape of the Lock."' 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

"Ah! qu'une vieille cour est bideuse! 

On n'y parle jamais ni d'amour ni d'amans, 
Qu'une princesse est malheureuse 
D*y passer ses plus jeunes ans ! 
Que c'est une chose ennuyeuse 
De ne voir que de vieux pedants!" 

Such epigrams and noels then enjoyed extreme popularity. Both 
courtiers and people felt avenged when they could laugh at the com- 
mon oppressor. The police watched and punished in vain. The 
thought of a nation will ever assert its freedom. Supple as they 
were, by nature, the courtiers could not always disguise their real 
feelings. The witty Madame de Caylus, niece of Madame de Main- 
tenon, being exiled from Versailles for having ridiculed the devout 
party, frankly exclaimed, on receiving the order of her banishment, 
"that the ennui felt at court rendered it the real place of exile." 
Madame de Maintenon, herself, was overpowered with the dulness 
of this vast prison-house. "Ah!" said she to a friend, who seemed 
to envy her proud destiny, " if you knew what it is to have to amuse 
a man whom nothing can amuse !" 

The faded glory of his reign, the gloom and reverses which dark- 
ened its close, the impatience of the new generation, the ill-concealed 
ennui of his children and friends — all told Louis XIV. with a sig- 
nificance and eloquence he could not misunderstand, that his sway 
had lasted too long — that it was time for him to depart. But the 
old king resisted this charge with all the strength of his despotic 
will. If he could not create religious feeling, he at least exacted 
hypocrisy. A royal guard, on duty in the chapel at Versailles, 
desirous of amusing himself at the expense of the court ladies, one 
day declared, in their presence, that his majesty did not intend 
assisting at the religious service then going to take place. The 
ladies, wisely concluding that if the king was not to be present their 
devotion would be very uselessly thrown away, dropped off, one by 
one. Louis XIV. came, as usual, and was amazed to see the cha- 
pel empty, until the guard informed him of his mischievous trick. 
A large party at court did not, however, choose to practice this 
restraint; the young and profligate nobles gathered around the 
Duke of Orleans, and gloried in the opprobrious name of "roues." 
Two parties were thus in presence : one, consisting chiefly of super- 
annuated libertines, gave itself up to all the austerities of seeming 
devotion; whilst the other, which counted in its ranks the sons and 
daughters of these hollow devotees — the youth and flower of the 
nobility, revelled in the grossest and most open licentiousness. 

Louis XIV. vainly sought to restore France to her ancient faith : 
her lips professed it still, but incredulity was in her heart. The 
profligacy of the higher clergy, and the narrowmindedness of the 

2* 



18 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Jansenists — those Puritans of Catholicism — had alike been fatal to 
religion. Atheism prevailed, — not indeed under the form of that 
daring philosophy of later times, which left no mystery unscrutin- 
ized, and no destructive argument untold, — but as a great and la- 
mentable want of faith; because faith was worn out and exhausted. 
"Why, people laugh at everything here!" said the young Duchess 
of Burgundy, when she came to the court of France. The naive 
remark expresses admirably the nature of the scepticism of the period. 
Mere mockery ! — no more ! 

This Epicurean creed was first propagated by the profligate and 
indolent aristocracy. The stern rule of Richelieu had broken their 
chivalrous spirit with the ancient feudal power from which it sprang. 
They left their old ancestral halls for the palaces of kings: from 
haughty vassals they became servile courtiers. They were despised 
by the absolute monarch, as dependants on his favour and will ; and 
by the oppressed people, as a class loaded with privileges and wealth, 
but without power. The sense of self-dignity and honour faded 
away from them: they gloried in their vices; cheated at cards, and 
confessed it. Fontenelle wished to prevent the publication of Hamil- 
ton's " Memoirs of De Grammont," in order to spare the hero whose 
dishonesty they exposed. De Grammont, who had received 1500 
livres for the manuscript, hastened to remove the impediment. As 
if to render rank and title more contemptible still, the minister, 
Pont Chartrain, had made them both saleable. For two thousand 
crowns a roturier might become a gentilhomme. Heavy taxes were 
laid on the letters-patent of nobility; for the vanity of the financiers 
who wished to become noble, rendered this a profitable branch of 
revenue. To such an extent was this practice carried, that a large 
body of men had no other occupation than to provide arms and ge- 
nealogies for the new nobility. This second-rate aristocracy was, 
like the old, exempt from taxation. The Celestins, a religious house 
of Paris, accordingly purchased the office of secretary to the king, 
which conferred nobility, and freed them from the taille. Thus the 
people, on whom rested the real burden of supporting the nation, 
were oppressed by both rank and wealth. The nobles, whilst they 
hated the plebeian intruders into their order, married their richly- 
dowered daughters; protesting, however, like Madame de Grignan, 
"that they were only manuring their barren ancestral lands, in order 
to render them once more fertile." But the truth was, that the 
aristocracy felt the power, so long granted to rank and chivalrous 
honour, now passing over to wealth and practical intelligence. The 
wealthy bourgeoisie remained for some time unconscious of their own 
importance; before which even the haughty Louis XIV. was com- 
pelled to bow. Samuel Bernard, the rich Jewish traitant, having 
refused to grant a large loan required by the minister Des Marets, 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

was presented to the king at Marly, and shown over the palace by 
the monarch; who paid him such flattering marks of distinction, 
that the vain and elated financier immediately gave his consent to 
the required agreement. 

Half a century later, all the seductions of the Grand Monarque 
would have failed in producing such a result ; but the financiers 
still occupied an inferior position in society : they were striving to 
win their place ; they had not won it. With all their extravagance 
and pride, they lacked the polish and elegance of the aristocrats, 
through whom they, the men of the people, were connected with 
the first families of the realm. Their activity and ambition tended 
to supply these deficiencies. They attained rank and power ; whilst 
the nobles, too proud to stoop to scientific and literary pursuits, 
remained in a state of luxurious indolence, which justified the bitter 
definition of Montesquieu — " A lord is a man who sees the king, 
speaks to the minister, has ancestors, debts, and pensions.' 7 

But if men were thus inactive and powerless, women were not. 
The same Montesquieu declared, " that the individual who would 
attempt to judge of the government by the men at the head of 
affairs, and not by the women who swayed those men, would fall 
into the same error as he who judges of a machine by its outward 
action, and not by its secret springs." Women were indeed already 
exercising that great power, which attained its full development 
towards the middle of the century. They eagerly seized on influ- 
ence, whatever the means of influence might be. They had received 
from their male relatives a shameless example of profligacy, which 
they were not slow to follow. When women fall, they fall deeper 
than men, because the only sense of honour allowed them by society 
departs, if once the purity of their lives is tainted. The abandoned 
conduct of ladies of rank threw a great reproach on their order. It 
created doubts on the legitimacy of the most noble families, and 
scandalized the people who lived apart in patriarchal austerity. 
The corrupting tendency of a despotic government had reached the 
women who lived beneath its sway. The men, deprived of political 
rights, used their female friends as the means of their ambition. 
Indirect power is necessarily immoral : when exercised by women, 
it is still more so. At the times of which we speak, a spirit of 
ambition and intrigue, not pure in its origin or purely exercised, 
seemed to have seized on the whole sex. The persevering ambition 
of the widow of the burlesque poet, Scarron, had made her Queen 
of France, in all save name. Her friend, Madame Gruyon, attempted 
to found a- religious sect, and caused the long quarrel between Bos- 
suet and Fenelon, which ended in the exile of the latter. Whilst 
apparently wrapt in the gaieties of Sceaux, Madame du Maine 
plotted and schemed for the aggrandizement of her husband ; one 



20 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

of her chief agents being her clever femme de chamber, Mademoi- 
selle de Launay. Ladies who had nothing better to do, and no 
surer means of making a fortune, turned their hotels into gambling- 
houses, from which they derived a large and infamous revenue. 
Others conscientiously devoted themselves to the education of the 
young noblesse. The youthful de Fronsac, so well known for his 
intrigues under the name Richelieu, was early taught, by Ma- 
dame de Brancas, to write billets doux which he could never spell, 
make imaginary assignations, feign love, jealousy, and all the other 
appearances of the tender passion. Thanks to this early and judi- 
cious teaching, his father was compelled to send him to the Bastile 
in the fifteenth year of his age. 

Some women intrigued without any definite object; for the mere 
pleasure of intriguing, and because their over-active minds needed 
exertion. Of these was an obscure lady named Mademoiselle de la 
Chausseraie. Without rank, wealth, or beauty, concealing her con- 
summate tact under an air of naive simplicity, she yet exercised a 
great and occult power. She served people whom she had never 
seen, for whose gratitude she did not care, and who never felt any 
gratitude for her. She was feared by the ministers, she often upset 
Madame de Maintenon's most deeply-laid schemes, and, without 
creating even a suspicion in his mind, she had the art of influencing 
the decisions of Louis XI Y. 

Being one day in the salon of Madame de Ventadour, she learned, 
by accident, that Letellier, the king's Jesuit confessor, was to obtain 
from the monarch an order to arrest the Cardinal of Noailles, a Jan- 
senist, on the following morning. Determined that this should not 
be, she immediately proceeded to Versailles, and, being introduced 
into the presence of the king, according to the privilege he had 
granted her, observed, with her usual bonhomie, that his majesty 
looked unwell and annoyed, probably by some new priest's quarrel. 
She then dropped a few hints on the expediency of letting the Jesuits 
and Jansenists settle their own dissensions, and of preserving, above 
all things, a health so invaluable to the kingdom. 

The king was so struck with this reasoning, and especially with 
that portion of it relative to his health, that, when Letellier asked 
him the next morning for the order to arrest the cardinal, he drily 
informed him he had altered his mind, and wished to hear no more 
on the subject. Thus was the coup d'etat, so long prepared by 
Madame de Maintenon and the confessor, wholly overthrown. In 
relating this anecdote to a friend, several years after the death of 
Louis XIV., Mademoiselle de la Chausseraie confessed that she only 
retained her power over the monarch's mind, by assuming an ap- 
pearance of such simplicity, and even stupidity, that he never sus- 
pected the measures he adopted to have arisen from her apparently 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

careless suggestions. She acknowledged, at the same time, that the 
mental exertion necessary to maintain this constant dissimulation 
often left her overpowered with fatigue. 

There was nothing likely to purify or exalt the female character 
in influence so exercised; we accordingly find few of the women, 
who possessed any power, remarkable for moral excellence. Their 
intellect, from not being allowed a free scope, was perverted to evil 
ends. The prejudice against female authorship, in persons of high 
rank, was still so strong, that the amiable and accomplished Mar- 
chioness of Lambert would never allow her productions to be pub- 
lished. It was only by manuscript copies, obtained from her friends, 
that the booksellers could succeed in printing them; and, on one 
occasion, she bought back the whole edition. This prejudice, as 
Madame de Lambert observed herself, acted injudiciously on the 
female character. The ridicule which Boileau and Moliere had cast 
on all female writers was more prejudicial still. Many women, who 
might have spent their time in an agreeable and at least harmless 
manner, supposing their writings to possess little merit, were thrown 
back on intrigue for an occupation. The idleness to which noble 
women were, like all persons of their rank, reduced, added to their 
degradation and heartlessness. Notwithstanding, however, the gene- 
ral profligacy, the convenances were still strictly observed. Any 
highborn lady, chiefly known for the irregularity of her conduct, 
could, like Madame de Parabere, the mistress of the regent, act the 
part of a heroic and devoted wife. If her husband was attacked 
with the small-pox, then so fatal, she made her will, bade her rela- 
tions farewell, and became the patient's nurse; her own life often 
being the price of this sacrifice to vanity and ostentation : when, like 
Madame de Parabere, she was so fortunate as to survive the trial, 
she did not fail, as soon as it was over, to return to her intrigues; 
whilst the world still rang with praise, which all knew to be as false 
and hollow as this seeming devotedness. 

Besides the individual power of intrigue, there was another power, 
higher still, far more effectual, and on which women had the tact to 
seize at once. We allude to the influence literature already con- 
ferred. 

In consequence of the gloomy tastes of the monarch, of the weak- 
ness of the clergy, of the indolent profligacy of the nobles, and of 
the coarseness of the wealthy bourgeois, the real social power had 
become transferred to literature ; which, in its turn, was considerably 
modified by the women of the day. During almost the whole of 
the eighteenth century, France was in a state of political repose. 
Thinkers were the only active men; their power was necessarily 
great. When the body is at rest, the mind must work. Those 
thinkers submitted, however, to the influence of woman, because 



22 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

their activity was purely mental. They were men of theory, who, 
whilst they ruined the social edifice, left to others the task of active 
destruction. The spirit of antagonism, which then pervaded every 
class, was the reason that, though so often persecuted and contemned 
by their cotemporaries,.the French writers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, nevertheless, retained their influence over them to the last. 
Though it gave birth to so many remarkable productions, the seven- 
teenth century had not granted a similar power to its literature. 
There was then more of abstract art, and less of active thought, than 
in the following period. The patronage of Louis XIV. shackled 
literary freedom. His praises and pensions silenced genius more 
effectually than persecution. This conduct was not, however, the 
result of policy. The great power of the press, as a vehicle for 
political and philosophical opinions, was still unsuspected in France. 
The satires of Boileau and the comedies of Moliere were directed 
against the vices of society, not against society itself: Tartuffe, 
Moliere's boldst effort, was openly sanctioned by the king. The 
change which the succeeding century wrought in the influence of 
literature extended to society. Men of every class felt the want of 
mingling more freely together: the author emerged from his study, 
and appeared in the fashionable world, to which he imparted some 
of his own gravity of thought, whilst he acquired an ease and polish 
hitherto foreign to him. 

The action of literary men on society was chiefly exercised 
through the women, in whose select assemblies they were admitted, 
and who naturally influenced their views, and their mode of ex- 
pressing them. This is an important fact; for, though less politi- 
cally great than in the preceding century, France was then ac- 
knowledged to be the focus of European intelligence. Her philoso- 
phers, her literary and scientific men, interpreted the feelings and 
opinions of the age ; to which their daring scepticism and satirical 
raillery soon gave the prevailing tone. She no longer owed her 
preponderance over other nations to the personal character of her 
monarch; for the hand that swayed her was vacillating and weak: 
her greatness was not political, but social and intellectual : her power 
was that of ideas, and it proved more great and extensive than the 
warlike despotism of Louis XIV. M. Guizot judiciously remarks, 
in his "History of Civilization," that "the power which France 
possesses of imparting her own feelings and ideas to other nations, 
does not spring from the originality of those ideas, which are often 
borrowed, but from the sociable and communicative character of the 
people." To this we may add, that for this charasteristic France is 
chiefly indebted to her women, and their influence in society. This 
was especially the case in the last century, when their power was so 
great that Schlosser has not hesitated to compare it to that exercised 



INTRODUCTORY. 23 

by Richelieu and Colbert over their own times. This is almost 
equivalent to saying that it was unbounded. 

Women owed this power to the want of political liberty. This 
want was not greater than in the preceding century; but the wish 
for freedom had increased. The salons over which they presided 
were the only places where what could not have been published, 
without the prospect of the bastille, might be spoken with compara- 
tive impunity. This is why the influence of woman. can so clearly 
be traced through all the philosophy and literature of the eigh- 
teenth century. That graceful brilliancy of style — the light, frivo- 
lous mask, which concealed such destructive features — clearly belong 
to her, and to that conversational power fostered beneath her care, 
under the name of causerie; so distinctive, in itself, of the times 
and of the national character. 

It was, however, at a much later period that literature acquired 
this great influence in France. Voltaire was still unknown under 
Louis XIV.; Fontenelle's cautious scepticisms only paved the way 
for bolder attacks on creeds and doctrines ; Lesage merely aimed at 
the reformation of manners, and, in pourtraying his contempora- 
ries, he left a lamentable picture of their total want of moral sense. 
A few literary societies, nevertheless, existed : that of Madame du 
Maine was brilliant, social, literary, and political. It answered her 
taste for wit and her ambitious designs. 

Old Ninon de FEnclos, once so celebrated for her beauty and 
Epicurean philosophy, and still known by her wit, also gathered 
around her some of the most eminent men of the day, who met to 
rail, with more decency, however, than was displayed in the abodes 
of princesses, at what the world still respected outwardly. There 
might have been seen J. B. Rousseau, the poet; the gay Abbe de 
Chaulieu ; Fontenelle, whose easy philosophy marked the transi- 
tion between the two centuries ; Chateauneuf, the ancient admirer 
of the once young and beautiful hostess; and a child named Arouet, 
who grew up in these sceptical and corrupt assemblies, and who 
afterwards transferred their immoral and irreligious doctrines to his 
writings, in the purest and most elegant French ever written since 
the seventeenth century. 

A spirit of discontent and a defiance of authority characterized 
these coteries. Authors now no longer depended on haughty 
patrons : they were courted by society itself; and yet their irritable 
pride was constantly wounded by new slights, reminding them of 
their former subordinate position. Keenly alive to evils from which 
they suffered, and to all of evil that they saw, they attacked, with- 
out much mercy, whatever they thought worthy of being con- 
demned. Their attacks were in accordance with the spirit of the 
times. Vague ideas of freedom were already abroad. The English 



24 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

revolution of 1688 produced a deep and lasting impression in 
France. Many began to wonder why the nation, which was all in 
a neighbouring country, should be nothing at home. The sense of 
literary restraint became daily more oppressive. Writers felt dis- 
satisfied with private controversies on forbidden subjects; they 
longed for the broad day of publicity enjoyed by English philoso- 
phers. The French Parliament likewise envied the authority of 
the English commons ; similar feelings pervaded every class : the 
nobles felt wounded at the servility to which they were compelled 
by the monarch; the higher clergy submitted impatiently to the 
yoke of royal authority; whilst the tiers-etat, or bourgeoisie, dis- 
liked the nobles and priests, because they saw them, though weak 
and powerless, in possession of the most valuable privileges. Had 
the upper classes been strong and active, the hardship would not 
have been felt so much : the logic of practical life teaches that 
power and privilege must associate; but they were feeble and cor- 
rupt. All that was left of the old feudal system was the inequality 
of ranks: the good it effected had vanished; the evil remained. 

This spirit of discontent was increased by the writings of the 
exiled and persecuted Huguenots, who had taken refuge in Holland 
or England. Their works, full of bitter attacks on Louis XIV. 
and Catholicism, were, in spite of every prohibition, introduced in 
France ; where they spread the hatred of the monarch and of the 
Church, without serving the Protestant faith ; which, like Jansen- 
ism, was only used as a form of opposition to the ruling power. 
Amongst these writers were some whose enmity had a much deeper 
object than the annoyance of their persecutor. Their chief was 
Bayle, who always wavered between the Protestant and Catholic 
faiths ; unable to fix his mind on either creed. 

Bayle seems to have written to show the vanity of all belief: his 
scepticism was not, however, a creed, like that of the French Ency- 
clopedists; who were as intolerant as their opponents. His mind, 
which gave him plausible reasons for everything, was too impartial 
for enthusiasm. But the immense research to which he devoted his 
whole life, and the merciless patience with which he accumulated all 
the destructive facts and arguments likely to bear on any subject 
he had taken in hand, rendered his works, what they have been 
truly termed, "an arsenal/' from which the French philosophers, and 
Voltaire especially, drew their most fatal weapons. 

This sceptical contempt extended even to literature. The faith 
in ancient art, so characteristic of the seventeenth century in France, 
almost vanished with the new era. La Mothe, though a poet (a 
weak one it is true), attacked versification, as a superfluous mode of 
expressing what could as well be told in prose. In spite of the 
learned Madame Dacier's indignation, he endeavoured, like Per- 



INTRODUCTORY. 25 

rault, to lower Homer from the high rank assigned him by the admi- 
ration of ages. Though this heresy of art produced no important 
result, it announced the coming of other times, when judgment 
would replace traditionary reverence and implicit belief. Free- 
thinking soon became synonymous with taste and philosophy; the 
keen wish for discussion on forbidden subjects could no longer be 
confined within the limits of a fashionable drawing-room : sceptical 
philosophers resorted to the public coffee-houses, where, by using fic- 
titious terms, they succeeded in carrying on warm controversies, in 
spite of the police spies. The gardens of the Tuileries were fre- 
quented by ardent politicians; and loudly expressed wishes for the 
beginning of a new reign, might be heard under the windows of the 
royal palace. 

Such were the varied elements of which declining society con- 
sisted at the close of Louis the Fourteenth's long reign : a gloomy 
court, rendered austere by the king, but which still remained impure 
at heart; a weak clergy; licentious nobles; a deeply discontented 
bourgeoisie; a host of daring thinkers, impatient to attack the old 
social edifice ; women of great wit, but little virtue, capriciously ex- 
erting their almost sovereign influence — everywhere the traces of 
forthcoming dissolution. 

The political condition of France was equally gloomy and preca- 
rious. The extravagant war, undertaken against the half of Europe, 
in order to place the monarch's grandson on the throne of Spain, 
had reduced the kingdom to a state of great distress. Through the 
influence of Madame de Maintenon and Chamillart, the minister of 
her making, weak and imbecile generals were opposed to the first 
captains of the age. Another fatal error was to clog the motions of 
those generals, with the timid measures decided upon by the king 
and his over-cautious minister, in the boudoir of Madame de Main- 
tenon.. The war, thus protracted, instead of being brought to a close, 
assumed a most alarming aspect for France, and overshadowed with 
melancholy forebodings the close of a reign once celebrated for its 
greatness and magnificence. When this struggle had at length been 
brought to a favourable issue, Louis XIV. was overwhelmed with 
grief by the successive deaths of his only son the Dauphin, the 
the Duchess of Burgundy, her husband, their young child, and the 
Duke of Berri, the king's youngest grandson. Of his numerous 
legitimate descendants, the only survivors were Philip V. of Spain, 
and his great-grandchild, the Duke of Anjou. The sudden deaths of 
all these royal individuals were attended by such singular symptoms, 
that the majority of the nation attributed them to poison adminis- 
tered by the Duke of Orleans. The prince studied chemistry under 
a foreign savant, named Homberg, and he was immediately accused 
of being skilled in poisons, and of wishing, through this means, to 
3 



26 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

make himself a way to the throne. The Duke of Orleans, whom 
these calumnies drove to despair, requested the king to send him to 
the bastille, in order to await a regular trial. Louis refused : though 
he disliked his nephew, he could not believe in his guilt. The accu- 
sations directed against him, nevertheless influenced the policy he 
adopted with regard to the regency of the kingdom. Whilst he 
nominally confided it to the Duke of Orleans, he placed the real 
power in the hands of his own illegitimate son, the Duke of Maine. 
To this he was greatly urged by Madame de Maintenon, who, having 
educated his natural children, loved them with the tenderness of a 
mother. Already had she obtained for them the decree which effaced 
the illegitimacy of their birth, declared them princes of the blood, 
and gave them the right of succession to the crown. Not satisfied 
with this, she next wrung from Louis a testament wholly in favour 
of the Duke of Maine. He complied, without deceiving himself as 
to the extent of the respect or obedience his once absolute will would 
receive when he had been removed by death. 

The power of Madame de Maintenon over such a strong mind as 
that of Louis XIV. is a singular feature in the history of his reign. 
This remarkable woman, whom posterity has judged more impartially 
than her contemporaries, seerns to have been disliked chiefly because 
her austerity, which she communicated to the king, repressed the 
impatience and licentiousness of the young generation. Notwith- 
standing all that has been asserted to her prejudice, she certainly 
possessed many eminent qualities. - Though not gifted with the 
brilliant wit of her rival, Madame de Montespan, she was remark- 
able for great good sense, exquisite tact, and a severe simplicity 
which seemed to reject, for both her mind and her person, all the 
embellishments of art. The early history of this celebrated woman 
is too well known to be related here. From the widow of the bur- 
lesque poet, Scarron, she became, at the age of fifty-two, the wife of 
one of the greatest kings of Europe. Though her marriage was 
never acknowledged, she was queen in reality. Her patient ambition 
had raised her from obscurity to a throne; but this feeling was, with 
her, void of energy or greatness. The few political acts in which 
she participated were marked by the timidity and cautiousness of her 
character. She did too much to be forgiven by her enemies, and 
too little to crush them. She had none of the commanding qualities 
which exact respect, even whilst they may excite hatred. In her 
friendships, she showed, to the last, both the natural coldness of her 
character and her want of moral courage. Her influence over her 
contemporaries was merely transient; she was naturally grave and 
austere, and in her old age she became devout and intolerant. She 
succeeded in imparting enough of these qualities to the king to add 
to the gloom of his court. At the death of Louis XIV., her power 



INTRODUCTORY. 27 

ceased ; and when she retired to Saint Cyr, the outward respect 
which had been paid, till then, to modesty and virtue vanished from 
the court of France. The only portion of her political influence 
which survived her, was that which she exerted for the Duke of 
Maine. This woman, who never asked anything for herself or for 
her relatives, was constantly importuning the king for his legitimized 
son. She spared no effort in order to secure the testament which 
was to raise her beloved pupil to power. 

There must have been something inexpressibly bitter for the old 
king in those intrigues, tending to remind him daily of his approach- 
ing end, and carried on by those most dear to him. The unhappy 
state of the country added to his melancholy. His wars and ex- 
travagance had reduced France to the brink of ruin : her finances 
had fallen into a most deplorable condition. But, whilst Louis 
entertained a bitter consciousness of his errors, he had not the 
courage to repair them : he left the arduous task to his successor. 
Though he bore his misfortunes with dignity, the people could 
not forgive him the shame and misery he had brought down on 
France. The- shadow of that idolatrous homage, so long granted to 
him, now alone remained. Fear and hatred filled almost every 
heart. The king had ceased to be invincible; and, though he dis- 
played more moral greatness in his last years than during any other 
portion of his life, the grandeur with which he had dazzled the 
nation so long had vanished for ever. Those who had seen him 
surrounded by Colbert, Conde, Turenne, Corneille, Racine, and 
Moliere, were no more. His former greatness was merely tradi- 
tionary, whilst the reverses caused by his ambition were still recent. 
Louis himself, who seemed conscious of having lived too long for his 
fame, beheld his last hour, undismayed. Before his end, he had an 
opportunity of testing the truth of the protestations he had made 
on the vanity of life and of an earthly crown; for, when it was 
known that he had only a few hours more to live, the courtiers de- 
serted the royal palace, in order to gather round the Duke of Orleans, 
or his rival, the Duke of Maine. Even Madame de Maintenon 
abandoned the dying monarch, and, fearing her numerous enemies, 
retired beforehand to Saint Cyr. Louis vainly asked for her : she 
was gone. Only a few menials remained near the deathbed of the 
monarch, who, for nearly a century, had filled all Europe with the 
splendid follies and hollow glory of his reign. 



28 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Regent — His court and his family. 

Louis XI Y. had not yet been laid near bis ancestors, in the 
Royal Abbey of St. Denis, when the deep reaction caused by his 
death, in the general aspect of society, became apparent. By the 
mere force of his despotic will, the late monarch had prolonged the 
spirit of the seventeenth century beyond its natural limits ; and it 
is only from the accession of Louis XV. that the eighteenth century 
can, philosophically speaking, be dated. 

The death of the aged sovereign was welcomed with a feeling 
akin to joy, by the nation who had so long idolized his very name. 
The unhappy and starving people, who ascribed all their misery to 
his extravagance and overweening ambition, and who, during the 
last years of his reign, had often muttered curses, not loud, but 
deep, now openly exulted over the death of the tyrant. The signs 
of gladness exhibited at his funeral, when the people sang and 
drank on the road leading to Saint Denis, were too open to be mis- 
understood. Before plunging into the wild excesses of the regency, 
the nation seemed to exult at the removal of that stern restraint 
beneath which it had bowed so long. 

This spirit of animosity against the will of the late monarch, 
tended to consolidate the power of the regent. 

The death of Louis XIV. called to the throne, under the name 
of Louis XV., a sickly child, five years of age. The next heirs to 
the crown were — his uncle, Philip V. of Spain ; the Duke of Or- 
leans; the Princes of Conde and Conti; and Louis the Fourteenth's 
legitimized sons, the Duke of Maine and the Count of Toulouse. 
The treachery of one of Madame de Maintenon's friends, had ren- 
dered the Duke of Orleans acquainted with the contents of the 
monarch's testament. Before allowing the Parliament to examine 
the document, he, therefore, caused them to recognize his right to 
the regency, as first prince of the blood ; and adroitly promised to 
restore the ancient, right of addressing remonstrances to the crown, 
of which they had been deprived by Louis XIV. The testament 
was then opened : it nominally gave the regency to the Duke of 
Orleans, but the real power was awarded by it to the Duke of 



THE regent; his court and family. 29 

Maine. The Parliament were favourably disposed towards this 
prince, whose wife had long endeavoured to secure their good-will, 
through the President de Mesmes, promising, in case the testament 
were confirmed, to restore their privileges ; but the Duke of Or- 
leans appealed to their decision, whilst his rival affected to draw his 
right solely from his father's will. By supporting the claims of 
the former, which were also the most just, the Parliament had, 
therefore, the satisfaction of boldly asserting their authority in op- 
position to that of the late monarch; whilst the mere act of decid- 
ing between two princes of the blood, who appeared before them 
as rival candidates for the regency, was calculated to gratify their 
vanity, and increase their real importance. The will of Louis 
XIV. was, therefore, entirely set aside, and the Duke of Orleans 
invested with unlimited authority. 

The Duke of Maine, though not void of ambition, was too timid 
to venture on more than feeble remonstrances. After seeing him- 
self despoiled by the Parliament of all the advantages secured to 
him by his late father's will, the superintendence of the young 
king's education alone excepted, he silently retired to meet the bit- 
ter reproaches of his violent and ambitious wife. 

Society now assumed a wholly new aspect. The regent followed 
the plans of the Duke of Burgundy, and, rejecting the despotic 
centralization adopted by the late king, divided the unity of govern- 
ment by creating fifty- two state counsellors. Instead of the servile 
adulation which had so long greeted the. name of Louis XIV., the 
most bitter opprobrium was now heaped upon his memory, with com- 
parative impunity, by a host of virulent pamphleteers. Jansenism, 
which he had persecuted, was tolerated ; the spirit of freedom and 
equality he had sternly checked, accompanied this reaction. The 
President de Mesmes was the first individual of inferior rank who 
presumed to go into deep mourning, the privilege of high birth, 
after the monarch's death. To complete the contrast, the court, 
from that appearance of austere devotion which it had worn under 
Madame de Maintenon, passed to fcbe most open profligacy. The 
courtiers adapted themselves to the change with Protean facility. 
The old doting Duke of Noailles, whose hypocritical piety had won 
the favour of Louis XIV., now aifected to patronize an opera dancer, 
in order to pay his court to the regent, and appeared disgracefully 
intoxicated at the opera ball on the first night of its opening. 
These public balls had been suggested to the regent by the Cheva- 
lier de Bouillon, who was rewarded with a pension of six thousand 
livres for his fortunate idea. As the opera then stood in the gar- 
dens of the Palais Royal, the Duke of Orleans could pass from a 
private apartment of his palace into the theatre, mingling unknown 
with the masked crowd of every rank and class assembled there. 

3* 



30 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

The progress of equality was not the result of an acknowledged 
right, but of the ennui and profligacy of the nobles. 

A turbulent and corrupt society was, moreover, adapted to the 
taste of the regent. Though clever and talented, he was too aristo- 
cratic to encourage philosophy and literature by mingling with their 
professors : intercourse founded on intellectual pursuits levels the 
artificial distinctions of rank. To such society the regent preferred 
that of profligate noblemen and abandoned women : though their 
companionship might degrade the man, he imprudently concluded 
that it could not lessen the dignity of the prince. 

No man was ever so thoroughly identified by his character with 
the times in which he lived, as Philip of Orleans. His mingled 
atheism and superstition were the natural result of a mind too con- 
scious of its own immorality not to wish to deny the existence of an 
Almighty Being, and too much imbued with native faith to do so 
with impunity. The regent .could not reconcile Christianity, or 
even deism, with his conduct — which either creed would have re- 
proved; but he could seek for the philosopher's stone, endeavour to 
penetrate the secrets of futurity through the aid of fortune-tellers, 
or even, as he confessed to Saint Simon, spend whole hours in ad- 
juring the spirit of evil to appear — and this wild belief laid no check 
on his conscience : to admit the existence of a God would have filled 
his inmost being with all the fearful and avenging terrors of self- 
condemnation. This was why he made so open a boast of his im- 
piety ; as though, by shutting himself out from all hope of repent- 
ance, he could also have shut out from his soul the light of eternal 
truth. 

This struggle between atheism and belief, led the regent to seek 
oblivion, alternately, in all the excesses of dissipation, and in varied 
intellectual pursuits. Chemistry, music, painting, engraving, were 
succeeded by the most disgraceful orgies. But neither study nor 
pleasure, nor even power, when he possessed it, could free him from 
the ennui which unceasingly assailed his soul. This feeling of 
weariness showed that the regent, even whilst plunged in corruption, 
had a mind fitted for better things. His original nature was noble, 
frank, brave, trusting, and generous ; but the notorious Dubois, his 
preceptor, so perverted his youth, that his moral sense was never 
fully developed. The young prince was taught to despise human 
nature before he could judge of it; to look upon love, faith, and 
friendship, as hollow names; and to consider selfishness the great 
motive of mankind. Under this teaching, grew up the future 
regent of France ; dissembling, and acting on the maxim of divide 
et impera, whenever he found it convenient, and only indulging in 
his natural frankness because it was better suited to his humour ; 
never seeking to have a friend, or to be loved by any of his nume- 



THE regent; his court and family. 31 

rous mistresses, because he had no faith either in friendship or in 
love. This unhappy scepticism neutralized the effect of the regent's 
best qualities : his kindness of heart was only shown in good-hu- 
moured forbearance towards his enemies ; the activity of his intel- 
lect, wasted on trifles, could not save him from ennui ; and he fully 
verified his mother's ingenious apologue. — "That though good 
fairies had gifted her son, at his birth, with numerous qualities, one 
envious member of the sisterhood had spitefully decreed that he 
should never know how to use any of these gifts." 

These contradictions in a character where atheism, profligacy, and 
credulity appear mingled with glimpses of a better nature ; the wild 
thirst for excitement, and the deep weariness attendant on its in- 
dulgence, are alike characteristic of the regent and of the regency, 
and have rendered the two names inseparable. Even that deep im- 
morality which led the prince to glory in his errors, thus justifying 
the severe remark of Louis XIV., "c'esfc un fanfaron devices," is to 
be traced throughout that period, the most shameless and corrupt 
of French history. 

A court, to which the prince gave the first example of profligacy, 
could not but be the home of every vice. The suppers — which took 
place in a remote apartment of the Palais Royal, where the regent 
shut himself up with his roues and a few abandoned women, amongst 
whom often figured his own daughter, the Duchess of Bern — soon 
acquired a scandalous notoriety, increased by the affected mystery 
with which they were surrounded. It now became fashionable for 
every nobleman, and for many high-born ladies, to possess in the 
suburbs of Paris one of those petites maisons, afterwards so noto- 
rious : but which had been recently introduced by the devotees of 
the court of Louis XIV., who intended them for abodes of prayer and 
mortification, little foreseeing the very different uses to which they 
were to be applied. This affected veil of decency only increased 
the scandal it was destined to conceal : the mere possession of one 
of these convenient villas was in itself sufficiently significant. 

With such a state of society, it is easy to understand that, not- 
withstanding his profligacy and unprepossessing figure, the Duke of 
Orleans no sooner became regent, than all the clever and unprin- 
cipled women, who had, until then, vainly sought a free scope for 
their intrigues, fixed their eyes upon him, as one whom it required 
few personal charms to fascinate, and whose yielding temper would 
allow him to be easily governed. They soon perceived their mis- 
take. No man ever submitted less to the influence of woman than 
the regent. Neither the female members of his family, nor his 
numerous mistresses, possessed imy share of his confidence. The 
power which he allowed Dubois to acquire over him shows, however, 
that the regent was not guided by principle ; his motive was the 



32 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

deep and undisguised contempt he entertained for women : a feeling 
justified by his personal experience, as he had seldom held any inter- 
course save with the most profligate of their sex. 

When the witty Madame de iSabran once attempted to enter into 
a conversation on state affairs, he led her to a looking-glass, and, 
with ironical gallantry, asked her if it was suitable to talk of such 
dull matters to so charming a face ? Madame de Sabran took the 
hint, but avenged herself by declaring, at one of the regent's sup- 
pers, "that, when man had been created, some of the mud which 
remained served to fashion the souls of princes and lacqueys." 
Her lover only laughed at the sarcasm; which will give an idea of 
the tone that prevailed on such occasions. The clever and intrig- 
uing Madame de Tencin, who spared no pains to captivate the regent, 
and who even inspired him with a short caprice, was still more 
unsuccessful. When she attempted to influence him in a political 
matter, an insulting reply, and marked contempt, were the only 
results of her effort. Not even at those suppers, where he fell into 
the last stage of inebriety, did the prince give the least clue of his 
political designs to his companions : he avoided, however, surround- 
ing himself with too clever women; and his favourite mistress, 
Madame de Parabere, owed the preference he granted her over her 
rivals, to the poverty of her intellect, and the frivolousness of her 
character, which prevented her from taking any interest in matters 
unconnected with her pleasures. 

Thus, during the eight years of the regent's sway, women exer- 
cised no influence through him. Those who frequented his court 
only shared in its profligacy and licentiousness, without rendering 
it less gross or offensive. A sketch of the female members of the 
regent's family will suffice to give an idea of that court, and of its 
prevailing tone. 

Madame, his mother, was a haughty Palatine princess, full of an- 
cestral pride and moral rigidity. She had been married, at an early 
age, to the only brother of Louis XI V., Monsieur — an indolent, 
narrow-minded man, whose highest pleasure lay in wearing rouge, 
patches, and female apparel. Madame, on the contrary, had all the 
breadth and masculine vigour which her husband lacked; her mind 
was noble, frank, sincere, and above meanness or disguise : excessive 
politeness she scorned, as a species of deceit no one ever accused her 
of practising. Her manners were, like her person, eccentric, and 
somewhat coarse. Her short, square figure, heavy German counte- 
nance, and hands of unrivalled ugliness, contrasted unfavourably with 
the beauty of the Duke of Orleans' first wife, the lovely and accom- 
lished Henrietta of England. 

Madame rendered herself remarkable at the court of France, 
chiefly for the persevering nationality with which she clung to what 



the regent; his court and family. 33 

she termed "our good old German customs." Tea, coffee, and 
chocolate, she scorned as "foreign drugs;" French soups made her 
ill, and compelled her to comfort her German stomach with ham 
and sausages. Her greatest boast was, that she had introduced 
sauer kraut into France, and caused Louis XIV. to relish her favour- 
ite omelet of salt herrings. Courtly amusements had no charms 
for her: her masculine tastes, and robust constitution, made her 
delight in dogs, horses, hunting, and every species of violent exer- 
cise; she disliked dress, as only calculated to draw attention to the 
plainness of her person : her general costume of a round, close wig, 
like that of a man, and a tight-fitting riding habit, somewhat in- 
creased, however, the grotesque appearance of her square and thick 
figure. 

The honest mind of this princess was never reconciled to the du- 
plicity of the court ; where, as she said, falsehood passed for wit, 
and frankness for simplicity. Paris seemed to her another Baby- 
lon ; and when it thundered she feared lest the impious city should 
be reduced to ashes. This austere turn, which preserved her from 
corruption, was joined to excessive pride. This feeling, which 
convinced her that she had highly honoured her husband by mar- 
rying him, also induced her to seclude herself from the court ; not 
deeming the etiquette which was there observed, sufficiently rigorous. 
To her high indignation, the courtiers were allowed to keep on their 
hats during the promenade, and even to sit down in the drawing- 
room of Marly. Of this exaggerated hauteur Madame gave several 
instances ; one of which terminated fatally. Two female adven- 
turers, who claimed the title of Countesses Palatine, were placed by 
Madame de Maintenon near the person of her niece. Madame's 
anger, on hearing of the indignity thus offered to her name, was 
unbounded. Seeing one of the pretended countesses walking with 
several other persons in a public promenade of Versailles, she went 
up to her, and, after addressing her in the most opprobrious lan- 
guage, ended by threatening her with such condign punishment, 
that the unhappy girl, struck with shame and terror, fainted away, 
and died in a few days. Every one blamed Madame, and Louis 
told her the honour of her house had been too severely avenged. 
She replied, with much stateliness, that she liked neither lies nor 
liars, and, without more compunctious visitings, she dismissed the 
subject from her mind. A character which, notwithstanding its 
honesty and truth, was so little remarkable for amiabilit}', did not 
allow Madame to exercise much influence at the court of her bro- 
ther-in-law; where she seems to have had but one friend, Louis 
XIV., and one enemy, Madame cle Maintenon. Nothing could 
remove the mutual antipathy of these two women. Madame ; s 
hatred was coarse, violent, and prejudiced : she loaded the king's 



34 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

secret wife with abuse, and literally believed her to be in the habit 
of poisoning her enemies. Madame de Maintenon's animosity was 
more cool and active : she strove to lessen the influence of Madame 
over the monarch's mind ; and, what was more easy, to injure her 
son, the Duke of Orleans, who had deeply offended her. The two 
rivals not only hated, but despised one another. The haughty Ger- 
man princess knew that the royal favourite had not attained that 
high position without practising arts, to which the prospect of an 
empire would not have induced her to stoop ; whilst the philosophic 
Madame de Maintenon looked down with secret scorn on the proud 
Palatine princess, who could be so wrapped up in the glory of her 
ancestors, as to feel indifferent to the reality of power, though she 
rigorously exacted the vain shadow of etiquette due to her rank. 
So little, indeed, was Madame consulted, that the marriage between 
her son and Mademoiselle de Blois, daughter of Louis XIV. and 
Madame de Montespan, was agreed upon without her knowledge. 
Her indignation, at what she considered a degrading alliance, was 
such, that, on meeting her son in the gallery of Versailles, she 
gave him a slap on the face, in the presence of a host of witnesses. 
The poor prince, who had only yielded a reluctant consent to the 
match, needed not this new mortification. 

Madame did not possess more power under the regency : she wa3 
of opinion that France had already been too much governed by 
women for its welfare, and never sought to interfere but once. 
This was when her son was named regent: she then exacted from 
him a solemn promise that he would never employ Dubois in any 
official capacity. Though the regent gave her his word that her 
request should be obeyed, it was not long ere Madame learned that 
he had eluded his promise : she attempted no further political inter- 
ference, but remained satisfied with her son's affection and respect- 
ful behaviour. 

"Although my son is regent," she observes in one of her letters, 
"he never comes to see me, nor even parts from me, without kiss- 
ing my hand before I embrace him; nor will he allow me to hand 
him a seat. Nevertheless he is not timid, but speaks freely : in- 
deed, we laugh and chat together in a very friendly manner." 

It was, perhaps, to beguile the ennui of her secluded life, that 
Madame began that voluminous correspondence, of which a few ex- 
tracts have been published under the name of her memoirs : she, 
literally, seemed to live for no other purpose than that of writing 
to her Grerman relations, many of whom she had never seen, but 
whom she loved; and, according to the degree of their relationship, 
with a fervour which had never allowed her to forgive Louis XIV. 
for remarking, "that it was Lien bourgeois to be fond of one's rela- 
tives." Each day was devoted to different correspondents, whom 



THE regent; his court and family. 35 

Madame regaled with all the scandal of the court. Though her 
zeal was unwearied, she confesses that when she had written in one 
clay about twenty pages to the Princess of Wales — afterwards 
Queen of George II. — ten or twelve to her daughter, the Duchess 
of Lorraine, and about twenty more to the Queen of Sicily, she 
felt in need of repose. 

With her son's wife, the Duchess of Orleans, Madame could 
never agree. To forgive her for being the daughter of Madame de 
Montespan, would have been impossible : she might, however, have 
been mollified by a proper degree of humility ; but the young duchess, 
who overlooked the illegitimacy of her birth to remember that she 
was the daughter of Louis XIV., felt convinced she had greatly 
honoured her husband by marrying him. She was handsome, 
haughty, and apathetic; satisfied with the Duke of Orleans's show 
of respect, she appeared unconcerned at his numerous infidelities : 
even before her marriage she confessed that she cared not for his 
affection, and only wanted the rank of his wife. Her children 
were almost strangers to her : her brothers seemed to be the chief 
objects of her affection; and she was not without hopes of exercis- 
ing, through them, the political influence her husband had not 
allowed her to take over him. Owing to her excessive indolence, 
the superintendence of the education of her three eldest daughters 
devolved upon Madame; whose correspondence was grievously dis- 
turbed by these new cares. Those three princesses were, the 
Duchess of Berri, Mademoiselle de Valois, and Mademoiselle de 
Chartres. 

Madame de Berri, who had been married at an early age to Louis 
the Fourteenth's youngest grandson, was a handsome but violent 
and sensual woman. Her abandoned profligacy recalled that of 
those dissolute princesses, who filled Rome with the scandal of their 
excesses, towards the decline of the empire. Her inordinate ambi- 
tion had induced her to lay those inclinations under control until 
her marriage was over; but two days after the ceremony, she was 
brought home intoxicated from a supper at court. Her intemperance 
and profligacy henceforth became notorious. Her husband, who 
was at first passionately attached to her, soon grew disgusted with 
her conduct. This feeling was increased by the impiety she affected 
in her conversations with her father, who had brought her up in his 
atheistical principles. So reckless did Madame de Berri become, 
that she seriously insisted on flying from the kingdom with her 
favourite lover, la Haye. The danger, however, terrified him : he 
revealed everything to her father, who, with much difficulty, made 
her give up this wild plan. The early death of her husband, by 
giving her more freedom, increased her license ; and the accession 



86 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

of the regent to power, removed the slight restraint imposed upon 
her by Louis XIV. and Madame de Main tenon. 

Her arrogance, which had always been great, henceforth became 
excessive. She spared nothing to humble her own mother, whom 
she hated for being the daughter of Madame de Montespan. Be- 
tween her and Madame there existed an endless quarrel on the right 
of precedence, and other matters of etiquette. Owing to the weak- 
ness of her father, Madame de Berri soon assumed the style of a 
sovereign princess : she gave orders of banishment, crossed Paris to 
the warlike sound of trumpets, and received foreign ambassadors, 
enthroned in state under a canopy. Even whilst degrading herself 
by every vice, she exacted the deepest outward homage, and learned, 
with indignation, that her princely rank could not exempt her from 
the contempt due to her profligacy. She felt an instinctive hatred 
for those women whose conduct seemed to reprove her own. Her 
jealousy of Madame du Maine was excessive : she could not forgive 
her the contrasts which the nuits blanches of Sceaux, that home of 
elegance and refinement, offered to the scandalous orgies of the 
Luxembourg, where she resided. 

Notwithstanding her atheism and licentiousness, Madame de 
Berri had sudden fits of terror and devotion, which led her to retire 
occasionally to a convent of Carmelites. The whole sisterhood were 
then edified by the fervour she displayed, and some of the simple- 
minded nuns deplored, in her presence, the malice of those who 
calumniated so pious a princess. Madame de Berri laughed to hear 
them speak thus; and, after a few days spent in austerity, returned 
to her former mode of life. Her chief lover was Biom, a nobleman 
of high birth, but whose brutality and revolting personal appearance 
showed the depravity of this unhappy woman's taste. Her love 
for him resembled infatuation, and increased with his harshness and 
tyranny. Biom only followed in this the lessons of his uncle 
Lauzun; the same who was secretly married to Mademoiselle de 
Montpensier, and who averred that the Bourbons required to be led 
with a high hand. Madame de Berri soon became the slave of her 
lover, who loaded her with public insults, and made her receive into 
her intimacy his obscure or degraded companions; though, according 
to the laws of etiquette, no man, unless he were a prince of the 
blood, could be admitted at her table. The regent, indignant, not 
so much at his daughter's immorality as at the power assumed by 
Biom, often threatened to chastise his insolence; but Madame de 
Berri, who exercised over her father the ascendancy which her 
lover possessed over her, became so violent and irritated, that the 
duke was glad to ask for his forgiveness. The scandal caused by 
this intrigue increased, when it was known that the princess had 
given birth to a child in the palace of the Luxembourg. As she was 



THE regent; his court and family. 37 

dangerously ill, the cure of Saint-Sulpice offered her the rites of the 
church. She accepted; but when he came and made it a condition 
that Biom and her confidante, Madame de Mouchy, should both 
leave the palace, she refused indignantly. The regent interfered, 
but could not induce either his daughter or the priest to relent. 
When he appealed to the cardinal of Noailles, the austere prelate 
approved the conduct of the cure, and ordered him not to leave the 
chamber-door of the princess, lest some more complaisant priest 
should administer to her privately. The cure obeyed, and when- 
ever he was compelled to abandon his post, he caused another clergy- 
man to replace him. When Madame de Berri was pronounced out 
of danger, he retired j but not till then. His conduct, which created 
great scandal, was nevertheless generally approved, as a bold and 
uncompromising reproof administered to the corruption of the age. 

Madame de Berri vainly sought to lessen the effect of this dis- 
graceful affair, by devoting herself and her whole household to the 
Virgin, for the space of six months; during which time they ap- 
peared clad in white from head to foot, to the great amusement of 
the Parisians. The increasing influence of Biom, and the terrors 
of her own conscience, at length induced Madame de Berri to con- 
tract a private marriage with her lover: she even determined on 
acknowledging herself publicly as his wife. The fatal illness which 
carried her to the grave, prevented her from fulfilling this project. 
She long refused to believe in her approaching end, which she 
hastened by her intemperance; but, on becoming convinced of her 
danger, she resolved to pass from this world to the next with the 
pomp and solemnity suited to her high rank. Lying on a bed of 
state, and surrounded by the hushed and attentive members of her 
household, the dying princess, after bidding them all a last farewell, 
received the rites of the church in their presence. When the cere- 
mony was over, she proudly asked one of her attendants, " if this 
was not dying with courage and greatness V Her relatives were, 
however, so much embarrassed by the notoriety of her ill-conduct, 
that they had her conveyed privately to Saint-Denis, and buried 
without pomp. Even the effrontery of the age could not have tole- 
rated her funeral eulogy. Madame was at first much grieved at the 
death of her grand-daughter ; but, on learning that she had actually 
been married to her lover, she indignantly dried her tears. The 
pride of birth superseded every other feeling. 

Madame had, moreover, never been much attached to her son's 
eldest daughter ; whose conduct was only calculated to dishonour her 
high rank : her favourite was Mademoiselle de Chartres, a beautiful 
and eccentric girl, who indulged in masculine amusements; delight- 
ing in dogs and horses, and firing off pistols all the day long. She 
had all her father's versatility of talent : theology, music, surgery, 
4 



38 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

fireworks, and even wig and flower-making, were her chief occupa- 
tions ; but, like the regent, she could find no real pleasure in those 
varied tasks. Her strong Jansenist turn induced her to enter a 
convent, and take religious vows ; her relatives vainly opposed this 
determination : she carried her point, and became abbess of the 
convent of Chelles, in her eighteenth year. This event produced 
no change in her mode of life. Mother Bathilda, as she was now 
called, still indulged in her love for dogs, horses, and . fireworks ; 
completely destroying the peace of the poor recluses, whom she bled 
and doctored herself when they happened to be ill, and tormented, 
when they were in good health, by her alternate indulgence and 
austerity. Growing weary of her power, the young abbess at length 
resigned it in favour of one of her friends. This was no sooner effected 
than she wished to regain her freedom. After some negociation she 
removed to the Benedictine convent of la Madeleine du Fresnel, 
where she occupied a handsome apartment, and spent the remainder 
of her life ; her active mind leading her to study the most abstruse 
and the most futile subjects alternately, and, whatever she did, still 
leaving her a prey to unconquerable ennui. 

- Mademoiselle de Yalois, her sister, is chiefly celebrated for her 
attachment for the Duke of Richelieu ; whom she was said to intro- 
duce into her apartment in the Palais-Royal, through means of a 
mysterious cupboard, supposed to contain preserves. Madame, to 
whom she gave an infinite deal of trouble, disliked her, and was so 
highly incensed at Richelieu's audacity, that she once sent him word 
not to approach the place where she then was with her grand-daugh- 
ter, if he valued his life. The duke thought it prudent to obey. 
When the regent wished to marry Mademoiselle de Yalois to the 
Prince of Piedmont, Madame candidly informed his mother, the 
Queen of Sicily, of the young princess's intrigue with Richelieu. 
The match was immediately broken off. Though at first annoyed 
by his mother's indiscretion, the regent ended by laughing at it ; 
but it is likely that this proof of her secrecy in diplomatic matters 
confirmed him in the resolve of not granting her any political influence. 
The character of Madame would not have allowed her to possess 
any other. She felt no sympathy with the world in which she lived, 
and it had none for her. When her death occurred in 1722, she 
was scarcely missed from the court of France. But even those who 
did not appreciate her real worth respected her, and she was univer- 
sally acknowledged to be one of the few princesses, of the royal 
family, whose virtue remained beyond suspicion. 

Her contemporaries called her a woman of the olden time; and 
many of those who saw her secluding herself in uncompromising auste- 
rity from a corrupt court, must indeed have been strongly reminded 
of one of those stiff, gaunt figures of the old masters, rudely drawn, 



MADAME DU MAINE. 39 

and ungainly in their bearing, but full of truth, originality, and ster- 
ling worth. 

The characters of the other female relatives of the regent are more 
significant, so far as regards their epoch, than that of Madame. The 
apathetic pride of the Duchess of Orleans, the abandoned profligacy 
of her daughters, the Duchess of Berri and Mademoiselle de Valois, 
the eccentric and restless spirit of Mademoiselle de Chartres, paint 
the court of the regent : that home of wild, unbridled license, where 
woman was too much fallen to exercise any power. 

In regarding those licentious times, we perceive that this utter 
recklessness of public opinion springs from the thirst of excitement 
which fills a decaying society. Wild systems, which appeal to the 
covetousness and prodigality of the masses, then prevail ; atheistical 
princes disdain to believe in a God, whilst they study the occult sci- 
ences; degraded women openly sully the most illustrious names of 
France; all seem to feel that the reign of the aristocracy is drawing 
to a close, and endeavour to give themselves a fictitious youth by 
excesses, which only betray the corruption of old age. And, as 
though to mark how deep is the seat of that corruption, a princess, 
of undoubted virtue, thinks it more dishonourable for her grand- 
daughter to become the wife of a private nobleman, than to be his 
acknowledged mistress. 



CHAPTER II. 



Madame du Maine. — The society of Sceaux. — The Cellamare conspiracy. 

The influence which the regent did not allow woman to possess 
at his court, was soon exercised in favour of his enemies. Louise- 
Benedicte de Bourbon-Conde, Duchess of Maine, was the acknow- 
ledged chief of the strong and dangerous party opposed to his power; 
her high rank, talents, and ambition, rendered her influence formi- 
dable ; and had she only been able to impart her own ' active and 
energetic spirit to her husband, the Duke of Orleans would not have 
obtained the regency without a severe struggle. 

The influence of Madame du Maine was increased by the universal 
seduction she exercised, — a seduction the more remarkable that she 
was neither beautiful nor striking in her personal appearance. Her 
figure was not good, and was as slight and diminutive as that of 
a child ; her manner was lively and petulant ; but she could, when 



40 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

she chose ; give it a haughty dignity, which at once betrayed the 
daughter of the proud and princely Condes. She had the features 
of her race — more characteristic and expressive than beautiful ; with 
light coloured hair, a good complexion spoiled by rouge, and fine, 
expressive eyes, which often lit up her countenance with sudden 
beauty. She was naturally clever, and had received an excellent 
classical education. Her wit was light and brilliant ; her language 
rapid, precise, and singularly felicitous. The art of talking well was 
seldom carried farther than at her little court : both she and her 
husband excelled in this gift ; they had probably acquired it from 
the duke's mother, Madame de Montespan, who was celebrated for 
the hereditary wit of the Mortemarts, and imparted her pure and 
elegant phraseology to those who lived in her intimacy. The cha- 
racter of Madame du Maine, which was a compound of superficial 
wit, ambition, and caprice, did not adapt her, however, to the high 
political part she was anxious to act. She was bold, active, and 
vehement, but deficient in moral courage. She could struggle long 
and perseveringly for any object in view, — and whether this object 
was the discovery of the magic square or the regency of the king- 
dom, she displayed equal energy : but there was more restlessness 
than determination in her character ; and she never learned to bear, 
with even common equanimity, the misfortunes occasioned by her 
own imprudence. Her temper was violent, fickle, and selfish. Not- 
withstanding her wit and learning, she had a great horror of solitude 
and ennui, and could not dispense with the society of those indi- 
viduals for whom she cared least. "I am very fond of company," 
she frankly said, "for I listen to no one, and every one listens to 
me." She was accordingly seldom to be found alone. The crowd 
which surrounded her was not always very select. Her old admirer, 
Saint- Aulaire, who professed a romantic passion for her, and whom 
-she called her shepherd, tired of this noisy and uninteresting assem- 
blage, once impatiently asked her what she wanted with persons so 
little suited to her. "My dear shepherd," she candidly answered, 
" I am so unhappy as not to be able to do without that which I do 
not need in the least." This frankness originated in the Duchesse 
du Maine from temperament, reasoning, and selfish indifference to 
those around her. "I never tell a lie — I never attempt to dissem- 
ble," she once composedly observed ; " because I know very well 
that no one can ever be deceived." Notwithstanding the numerous 
faults which she unreservedly displayed to her most devoted adhe- 
rents, there was about this clever and volatile princess an irresistible 
charm, that never failed to fascinate those who lived in her inti- 
macy. 

Her royal highness was not only fond of intellectual company ; 
she also liked to indulge in those literary and platonic friendships 



MADAME DU MAINE. 41 

set in fashion by the precieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet, a few of 
■whom she had known in her younger days She was accordingly 
surrounded, at her residences of Sceaux and Anet, with a chorus of 
adoring and versifying shepherds, of whom Saint- Aulaire was the 
chief, and who, even when the princess's few charms had long faded 
away, affected a mortal jealousy of one another. Amongst these 
shepherds, Malesieu, her grave tutor in classical lore, held high 
literary sway. " His decisions," says the lively Madame de Staal, 
" had the same infallibility as those of Pythagoras with his disciples. 
The most ardent disputes were silenced as soon as the words, he has 
said it, were heard." 

La Mothe, the relentless foe of versification, ranked amongst the 
platonic admirers of Madame du Maine. Her correspondence with 
him, though little known and less read, still exists : it is the very 
essence of that light and frivolous esprit, which is rather an agree- 
able intellectual vivacity, than what we call wit. Those letters, if 
not intended for publication, were at least written to be widely read, 
like almost all the letters of this artificial period; Madame du 
Maine's were gravely discussed at the house of Madame de Lam- 
bert, where a polite assembly met every Tuesday. The princess, in 
her turn, circulated the epistles she received, amongst her jealous 
shepherds. She playfully complains to De la 3Iothe of their 
tyranny; and he, in the same tone, explains the transports he 
experienced on receiving her last letter, brought expressly from 
Sceaux by a courier. Xotwithstancling the insignificance of the 
whole correspondence, the feeling that it need never have been 
written, and that it is scarcely worth being read, it nevertheless 
possesses a certain nameless and well-bred grace of its own, which 
carries us back at once to the polished and frivolous circles of those 
times. 

The amusements and platonic affections of Madame du Maine did 
not absorb her so far as to deaden her ambition. Her volatile tem- 
per rendered her no great favourite with either the austere old king 
or his sedate wife j she, nevertheless, paid her court very assiduously ; 
and, taking advantage of the great friendship Madame de Maintenon 
felt for her husband, earnestly besought to be considered as her 
daughter. The king, Madame cle Maintenon, and Madame du Maine, 
all laboured to effect the aggrandizement of the duke ; who, though 
not without ambition, was too weak and timid to labour in his own 
cause. The violent temper of his wife — little#as she was, she had 
the reputation of beating him — and her tumultuous amusements at 
Sceaux, made him live with as great a degree of retirement as he 
could indulge in. Deformed, grave, and learned, he occupied himself 
with translations from the classics; whilst his active wife moved 
heaven and earth to secure him the regency at the death of the king. 

4* 



42 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

It was quite in vain she endeavoured to rouse him ; the Duke of Maine 
had not even dormant energies to awaken : so his wife had at length 
discovered, when she bitterly exclaimed, " You will find, on awaken- 
ing some day, that you are a member of the Academy, and that the 
Duke of Orleans is regent of the kingdom." Only the latter part 
of the prediction was fulfilled. 

The ambition of Madame du Maine was not purely political. She 
aimed at being considered the patroness of talent; but, though she 
could appreciate wit and light literature, she wanted the discernment 
necessary to encourage genius. Her liking for poetry was very 
peculiar. She seemed to consider it in the light of an art to be ex- 
ercised for the particular pleasure of princes and princesses. When 
she was ill, she said to those around her, " Write verses for me : I 
feel it is only verses that can give me any relief." Her patronage of 
literary men proved useful, however, to her political designs, and 
was favoured by the carelessness of the regent, who allowed "the little 
wasp of Sceaux," as he called her, to gather around her all the mal- 
contents whom his government had made. It was in her magnificent 
residence at Sceaux, where she lived in almost royal style, that 
Madame du Maine carried on her ambitious plans, under the mask 
of frivolous amusements connected with her order of the Honey Bee ; 
and that she received, with inimitable grace and tact, the guests whom 
her inclination or her policy had drawn together. Seldom had there 
been seen an assemblage more brilliant in wit or in courtly graces 
than that which gathered in the shady gardens of Sceaux. Elegant 
and accomplished women, many of them remarkable for their beauty, 
and a few for intrigues, over which they threw at least a veil of de- 
cency unknown at the court of the regent, daily mingled with men 
of great wit and talents, which were too often wasted in those enter- 
taining, but unprofitable assemblies. 

Amongst Madame du Maine's most constant guests were the Pre- 
sident Henault, known for his songs and bon mots; the old Saint- 
Aulaire, whose hopeless passion for the duchess was expressed in 
languishing madrigals; Malesieu, her learned tutor, who read the 
tragedies of Sophocles to this careless assemblage ; Chaulieu, the gay 
abbe and charming poet, whose wit, naivete, and finesse, seemed un- 
impaired by old age; Genest, author of admired tragedies now for- 
gotten, who has bequeathed to posterity a faithful account of the 
gaieties of Sceaux; and Yaubrun, the grave and obsequious courtier, 
who treated trifles with solemn gravity, lived in an atmosphere of 
fetes, polite phrases, and etiquette, till he was aptly termed, by 
Madame du Maine, " le sublime du frivole." The seductions of 
this witty and refined society attracted many occasional visitors ; of 
these were the brilliant Fontenelle ; La Mothe, the ingenious anta- 
gonist of Madame Dacier; J. B. Rousseau, the poet, and that young 



THE SOCIETY OF SCEATJX. 43 

and daring Arouet, who had not yet acquired European fame under 
the name of Yoltaire. A few of Madame du Maine's guests were 
destined to serve her political views. The handsome, eloquent, and 
insinuating Cardinal de Polignac, who plotted with her against the 
regent, vainly affected to be absorbed by his Latin poem of "Anti- 
Lucreee," in order to give a literary cloak to his visits. The gloomy 
and bitter poet, Lagrange Chancel, took less pains to conceal that 
hatred of the regent which he expressed in his powerful, though 
repulsive, philippics. De Mesmes, the president, through whom 
Madame du Maine influenced the parliament, and the ambitious 
young Duke of Richelieu, were amongst those guests whom common 
interests, more than sympathy with its mistress, drew to Sceaux. 

The individuals who composed this elegant little court, shared 
their days between intellectual pursuits and luxurious indolence. 
The madrigals of M. de Saint- Aulaire, or the epistles of Chaulieu; 
the philippics of Lagrange Chancel; fragments of Arouet' s CEdipe, 
that bitter satire of the regent's profligacy; M. du Maine's transla- 
tion of the Cardinal de Polignac' s Anti-Lucrece, and other produc- 
tions, since buried in oblivion, ministered to their daily amusement. 
The evenings were devoted to the card-table, to dancing, theatrical 
performances, and fetes in the open air, of the duchess's fantastical 
order of the Honey Bee. The women who shared this frivolous ex- 
istence are, with a few exceptions, unknown to posterity : one of 
them, however, has left a name destined to survive the short-lived 
glitter of those splendid festivities, in which her humble condition 
forbade her to mingle openly. We allude to Mademoiselle de Launay, 
whose charming Memoirs have rendered her so well known, under 
the name of Baroness of Staal, but who was then only one of 
Madame du Maine's femmes de chambre. 

A series of misfortunes had reduced Mademoiselle de Launay to 
this lowly station. Obscure by her birth, but superior to most wo- 
men of rank by the brilliant education she had received in a convent 
of Normandy, of which the abbess had taken her under her express 
protection, the young girl grew up in a refined atmosphere, and sur- 
rounded by all the luxuries of wealth. Her studies showed the bent 
of her mind : she cared little for poetry and music, but made con- 
siderable progress in geometry, and even took a tincture of anatomy ; 
Mallebranche and Des Cartes were her favourite authors. Though her 
personal attractions were never great, her graceful wit gained her 
many admirers, amongst whom were Yertot, the celebrated historian, 
and a gentleman named Rey ; whose feelings, though at first very 
ardent, gradually cooled. Of this, Mademoiselle de Launay soon 
acquired geometrical proof. M. de Rey was in the habit of seeing 
her home, occasionally, from the house of a mutual friend. " We 
were then obliged/' she observes, " to cross a wide place, and, in the 



44 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

commencement of our acquaintance, he always walked along the 
sides of this place ; but I now saw that he simply traversed it in the 
middle, whence I concluded that his love had diminished in the same 
proportion which exists between the diagonal of a square and the 
sides of the same." Mademoiselle de Launay' s geometry was evi- 
dently practical. 

The death of her benefactress threw her, unprotected, on the 
world at the age of seventeen. Fortunately for herself, the young 
girl possessed courage and a strong sense of independence. She 
firmly refused every offer of pecuniary assistance, and proceeded to 
Paris, where an intimate friend of Madame du Maine, the Duchess 
de la Ferte, took her under her protection. This kind, though 
capricious lady, was greatly pleased with Mademoiselle de Launay, 
whom she exhibited to her acquaintances in the character of a pro- 
digy, regardless of the humiliation and deep shame of her protegee. 
" Come, mademoiselle," she once exclaimed, in the presence of a 
friend, " speak." To the visitor : " You will hear how she talks. 
Speak a little about religion — you can say something else after- 
wards." Though thus put to the test, Mademoiselle de Launay's 
conversational powers did not desert her. The reputation of her 
wit soon extended to the little court of Madame du Maine, who 
thought of confiding to her the education of her own daughter. 
But, as the first novelty of her appearance wore off, the plan was 
abandoned. The fickle Duchess de la Ferte became, moreover, 
offended with her protegee; and when Mademoiselle de Launay 
applied to Malesieu for the place which had been promised her, he 
replied, that the only place Madame du Maine could offer now was 
that of attendant on her own person. The unhappy girl had no 
resource but to submit to this degrading offer : she keenly felt, 
however, the humiliations of her new position. Those persons who 
had admired her most during her temporary eclat, now affected to 
shun her; and Madame du Maine, on whom she waited daily, 
scarcely deigned to seem conscious of her existence. A trifling 
incident drew her from this obscurity. 

A beautiful girl, named Mademoiselle Tetard, who endeavoured 
to pass herself off for an inspired sybil, had drawn down some 
ridicule on Fontenelle: the celebrated author of the "Histoire des 
Oracles" was seriously asserted to have acknowledged her power. 
"De Launay, you ought to write to M. de Fontenelle, and tell him 
what the world thinks of him," carelessly observed Madame du 
Maine to her young attendant. Mademoiselle de Launay, who 
was acquainted with the witty philosopher, wrote to him the same 
day. Fontenelle was pleased with the graceful raillery of her letter, 
and showed it in the evening to some friends, who had, laughingly, 
brought up the subject of Mademoiselle Tetard. The letter was 



THE SOCIETY OF SCEAUX. 45 

read and admired; the persons present took copies of it, which were 
freely circulated over all Paris on the following day. In those 
times, when a well-turned madrigal could open the doors of the 
French Academy to Saint-Aulaire, it was only natural that Made- 
moiselle cle Launay 7 s letter should enjoy great success. In the 
mean time, the writer, unconscious of her sudden popularity, con- 
tinued to wait on her princely mistress, and to signalize herself by 
that awkwardness in filling the duties of her place, which had 
brought her into great contempt among the body of the waiting- 
maids. 

Madame du Maine learned by accident the fame acquired by her 
attendant : she was astonished, and henceforth took more notice of 
Mademoiselle de Launay; around whom now secretly gathered 
many of the remarkable men who came to Sceaux, and who -often 
deserted the saloons of their princely hostess, for the gloomy and 
comfortless room of her witty femme de chambre. 

The Abbe de Yaubrun, the assiduous courtier already alluded to, 
soon requested Mademoiselle de Launay' s assistance for a fete, which 
Madame du Maine's predilection for late amusements induced him 
to offer her. The Goddess of Night, personated by Mademoiselle 
de Launay, accordingly appeared before her royal highness, and 
thanked her, in a set speech, for the preference she gave the night 
over day-time. This was the origin of the nuits blanches, to which 
the courtly Dangeau thus alludes in his journal: — "Monday, 3d of 
December, 1714. Madame, the Duchess of Maine, who is always 
at Sceaux, and will not return until the end of the month, continues 
her festivities. She acts Athalie, and the most considerable persons 
about court are present. From time to time there is also at Sceaux 
what is called the nuits blanches. They are marked by great mag- 
nificence and wit." 

These festivities were offered to Madame du Maine by her guests, 
according to an alphabetical lottery, which they had established. 
He who drew out the letter B was bound to give a ballet; C was 
for comedy; for opera; and so on with the rest of the alphabet. 
Mademoiselle de Launay composed for the nuits blanches several 
ingenious plays, which added to their lustre. The death of Louis 
XI Y., and the events by which it was followed, interrupted, for a 
time, these frivolous gaieties. 

Madame du Maine now removed to Paris, and took up her abode 
in the Tuileries. Mademoiselle de Launay, whose task it was to 
read her mistress to sleep, soon acquired a large share of her con- 
fidence, and was initiated into all her hopes and schemes for the 
future. But, though she rose so much into favour as to relinquish 
her duties of attendant, and to be allowed a maid of her own, the 
occasional hauteur of the duchess never allowed her to forget her 



46 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

subordinate position. The world was less rigorous. Though she 
had only an obscure little room, without window or fireplace, in 
which to receive her friends, Mademoiselle de Launay gaily con- 
fesses that she was never at a loss for company. The witty Duke 
of Brancas, Fontenelle, Remond, and the Abbe de Chaulieu, (who, 
though blind and near eighty, professed a romantic attachment for 
her) were amougst those persons who willingly overlooked the nar- 
row lodging of the young femme de chambre for the sake of her 
society. The harmless passion of Chaulieu, which he expresses in 
some of the last verses he ever wrote, rendered the life of Made- 
moiselle de Launay very pleasant. His carriage was always at her 
disposal; he never visited her but with her express permission; and, 
whenever she agreed to honour them with her presence, he gave 
elegant fetes, where the most select company of Paris was assembled, 
for her amusement. The intrigues of Madame du Maine, in which 
Mademoiselle de Launay was called to join, soon disturbed this 
agreeable life. 

The active duchess was then busily engaged in repulsing the 
attacks of her numerous enemies. The weakness of the Duke of 
Maine encouraged the princes of the blood to protest against the 
edicts by which the legitimized children of Louis XIY. had been 
rendered their equals in rank. Madame du Maine answered this 
attack by a memorial, in which the rights of the legitimized princes 
were defended by all the arguments ancient or modern history could 
furnish. She was assisted in her labours by the Cardinal de Polig- 
nac, Malesieu, and Mademoiselle de Launay. The hours which had 
formerly been given to pleasure were now devoted to study; and the 
bed of the duchess was nightly covered with huge folios, under 
which, as she laughingly observed, she lay buried, like Enceladus 
beneath Mount Etna. When excess of fatigue caused her to relin- 
quish her task, she was read to sleep by Mademoiselle de Launay; 
who, in her turn, endeavoured to snatch a few hours of troubled 
repose. 

The memorial proved ineffectual, and the legitimized princes were 
deprived of the right of succession to the crown. As an answer to 
Madame du Maine's threats of revenge, the regent, moreover, took 
from her husband the superintendence of the young king's education, 
in presence of the parliament ; whose resistance to the introduction 
of Law's system he ascribed to her influence. The Duke of Maine 
and the Count of Toulouse, who both assisted at the proceedings, 
withdrew, on the first hint of the measures which were going to be 
taken against them. The parliament witnessed the degradation of 
their protector, and saw their own edicts against Law broken by the 
regent's council, without venturing to remonstrate. When her hus- 
band and her brother-in-law appeared before her, humble and crest- 



THE SOCIETY OF SCEAUX. 47 

fallen, Madame du Maine upbraided them for their cowardice, in the 
most bitter and violent language. The weak President de Mesmes 
she treated with deep and sarcastic contempt. When she was com- 
pelled to leave the apartment in the Tuileries, attached to the pos- 
session of her husband's late office, she displayed her violent temper 
and want of real dignity, by breaking all the looking-glasses, porce- 
lains, and other fragile ornaments which it contained. Prudent 
remonstrances she treated with sovereign' contempt; and in the 
height of her exasperation, unhesitatingly exclaimed : " My husband 
and his brothers are cowards ! I — though only a woman — feel 
myself capable of asking an audience from the regent, and plunging 
a dagger in his heart/' 

Madame, who believed " the little dwarf" capable of any violence, 
felt really alarmed for her son's safety. Though he laughed at her 
fears, the regent kept a strict watch on the motions of the duchess. 
Madame du Maine was, indeed, bent upon revenge ^ her projects 
were favoured by the state of the country. The liberal policy, af- 
fected by the Duke of Orleans at the opening of the regency, was 
soon relinquished by him; with it Vanished his brief popularity. 
The privileges granted to the parliamentary party had rendered 
them desirous of emulating- the freedom and power of the English 
Commons. In order to check this spirit, the Duke of Orleans broke 
their edicts, and finally deprived them of the right of remonstrance. 
This arbitrary conduct created deep discontent in Paris. The pro- 
vinces were equally inimical to the regent. The despotic central- 
ization of monarchy under Richelieu and Louis XIV., which led to 
future greatness and freedom, was still considered oppressive and 
tyrannical. The sense of local independence was so strong in Brit- 
tany, that the states refused to pay the taxes laid upon them by the 
regent, and carried on secret intrigues with Alberoni; offering to 
recognize his master, Philip V., regent, provided their province 
should become once more an independent duchy. Madame du 
Maine showed much ability in turning this general discontent to 
her own advantage : she encouraged the parliament, promised to aid 
the Bretons, and conciliated the whole provincial noblesse, by sug- 
gesting the convocation of the states-general ; a measure which had 
always involved the kingdom in turmoil, and was, therefore, popular 
with a restless and ambitious aristocracy. 

The influence of the duchess over literature, enabled her to increase 
the unpopularity of the regent. The.CEdipe of Voltaire, though 
patronized by the Duke of Orleans, was an attack against him and 
Madame de Berri; whom the Parisians soon called Berri-Jocaste : 
she affected not to understand the allusion, and assisted five times at 
the popular tragedy for which Voltaire was pensioned by her father. 
The philippics of La Grange Chancel were more open ; every invec- 



48 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

live, which the most bitter hatred could imagine, was heaped by 
the misanthropic poet on the regent. When these odious produc- 
tions were read to him, the prince affected to treat them with his 
usual carelessness; but, on hearing those lines which accused him of 
poisoning his relatives, and of administering even now a slow poison 
to the young king, tears of shame and indignation rolled down the 
cheeks of Philip of Orleans. La Grange Chancel was severely pun- 
ished; but the effect of his calumnies remained in the hearts of the 
people. 

The publication of the memoirs of Cardinal de Retz may, however, 
be considered as the literary coup-d'etat of Madame du Maine. Her 
tutor, Malesieu, found the manuscript amongst forgotten papers in 
the library of the President de Mesmes : he softened down a few 
passages, and gave the memoirs to the public under the guidance of 
the duchess. Their success was truly prodigious. Independent of 
their literary nierit, these memoirs, which related to the disorders 
of the Fronde under the regency of Anne of Austria, gave free 
scope to hopes and illusions openly encouraged by Madame du Maine; 
who, belonging to the same family as the beautiful Duchess of 
Longueville, longed to act, like her, the part of heroine and leader. 

The chief intrigues of Madame du Maine were carried on with 
Spain. Philip Y. had agreed to leave her husband the real power, 
provided his right of heir-presumptive to the crown were acknow- 
ledged by the title of regent. His ambassador, Cellamare, had re- 
ceived instructions from Alberoni to further the views of the duchess 
by all the means in his power. Her own personal adherents were 
Malesieu, De Mesmes, Mademoiselle de Launay, and the Cardinal 
of Polignac ; whose ambition and terrors of discovery alternately 
hurried on or impeded the motions of the other conspirators. This 
clever and insinuating prelate was little adapted for the intrigues 
into which he was led by his love of aggrandizement. His extensive 
learning and literary tastes fitted him for an elegant retirement, from 
which his ambition induced him to emerge in the hope of bettering 
his fortunes. His character was timid and vacillating ; he had only 
a feeble sense of honour, and held no consideration so high as that 
of his self-preservation. The imprudence of having such a man to 
share and guide her councils was manifest ; but Madame du Maine 
gave another proof of her heedlessness, by the efforts which she made 
to secure the assistance of the Duke of Richelieu. 

The duke was then in his twenty-second year; he was handsome, 
was acknowledged to dress inimitably, and two princesses of the royal 
blood, Mademoiselle de Yalois and Mademoiselle de Clermont, of 
the house of Conde, had quarrelled on his account. The regent, 
however, mortified him deeply by treating with contempt his pre- 
tensions to diplomacy. Alberoni seized this opportunity to write 



THE CELLAMARE CONSPIRATORS. 49 

him a letter, in which he praised his great talents. The epistle was 
well-timed ; for Richelieu, still smarting from his recent mortifica- 
tion, agreed to give up Bayonne, where his regiment was quartered, 
and to forward the cause of the Spanish king in the southern pro- 
vinces. With Madame du Maine's secret views, the duke was not 
acquainted : she attached, however, great value to his co-operation, 
and looked upon him as another Fiesche, conspiring in the midst of 
pleasure. 

The Marquis of Pompadour, blindly devoted to Philip Y., an ad- 
venturer, named the Abbe Brigaut, and the Marquis of Laval, of the 
noble house of Montmorency — whom his animosity against the re- 
gent, more than his zeal for Madame du Maine, induced to act as 
her coachman whenever she visited Cellamare — also entered into 
her plans from motives of personal ambition. Such varied elements 
of action promised nothing but confusion. The conspirators spoke 
of a war between France and Spain, concluded that the regent would 
take the command of the army, fixed on the camp he was to occupy, 
and talked of carrying him oif thence to the castle of Toledo. On 
this chimerical basis rested the whole plot. Its chief results, in case 
of success, were to be the deposition of the regent, the aggrandize- 
ment of the Duke of Maine, and of a few ambitious partizans, a civil 
war, and the introduction of a foreign foe. But Madame du Maine 
had often declared, "that those who had once been princes of the 
blood, and who with that title possessed the right of succession to 
the crown, ought to rouse and convulse the whole kingdom sooner 
than fall from this high rank." 

The plot was, however, prematurely discovered, through the im- 
prudence of one of Cellamare's secretaries ; who one evening excused 
himself to his mistress for having delayed his visit, by stating that 
he had been engaged all day in transcribing important despatches to 
be sent to Spain. The circumstance soon reached Dubois ) he caused 
the despatches to be seized ; they fully incriminated Cellamare and 
his friends. The ambassador was immediately arrested, as well as 
Richelieu, Brigaut, Pompadour, and Laval ; who were sent to the 
bastille. It has been asserted that Dubois and the regent suppressed 
the strongest proofs against the Duke and Duchess of Maine, and 
only produced those necessary to justify their apprehension. Before 
causing Madame du Maine to be arrested, the regent induced the 
Duke of Bourbon — who, though her nephew, was also her most 
active enemy — to allow her to be imprisoned in the castle of Dijon, 
of which he was then governor. The regent's object was to find a 
secure and distant prison for Madame du Maine, whose spirit and 
energy rendered her a dangerous captive ; and, by placing her under 
the custody of her own nephew, to impress on the public mind the 
5 



50 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

reality of her guilt, without the necessity of a trial : which her sex 
and high rank would have rendered embarrassing. 

Though conscious of their approaching arrest, the Duchess of 
Maine and her husband showed no uneasiness : they received visitors 
as usual, and the festivities of Sceaux were not even interrupted. 
On the evening of the 17th of December, 1718, Madame du Maine 
supped with her friend the Marquis d'Ancenis, captain of the guards; 
the next morning he entered her apartment at an early hour, and 
informed her that it was his disagreeable duty to make her his pri- 
soner. The duchess pettishly asked why he had wakened her up so 
early, and, after some demur, prepared to accompany him. She was 
at first led to believe that Fontainebleau, or some other royal palace, 
would be her residence ; but when she saw herself conveyed to the 
castle of Dijon, to be kept there under the custody of her own 
nephew, her rage knew no bounds. She wept and raved by turns, 
demanding if this was all the respect paid to her rank. When this 
fit of passion had subsided, she suddenly submitted to her fate, and 
played cards all the day long with those persons of her suite who 
had been allowed to accompany her. 

Mademoiselle de Launay was not of the number ; she was confined 
in the bastille with her faithful maid, who had insisted on sharing 
her captivity. The Duchess of Bourbon, mother of Madame du 
Maine, had vainly asked that her daughter might be allowed the 
society of her favourite femme de chambre. Madame, whose inter- 
cession she had requested in this matter, indignantly replied, " That 
Mademoiselle de Launay was a great intrigante, who had conducted 
the whole affair ; that she was in the bastille, and deserved to remain 
there." Mademoiselle de Launay expiated the honour of having 
been in the confidence of a princess, by a close imprisonment of a 
year and a half. Her chief amusements, during the first months of 
her captivity, were the study of the Latin language, and the gambols 
of a cat and her kittens ; which the rats that infested her room had 
compelled her to ask for, notwithstanding her previous dislike of 
animals. She also spoke from her window to Richelieu, who was 
incarcerated in a different part of the fortress, and, with true French 
insouciance, they gaily sang together airs from the opera of Iphigenia. 
M. de Maison-Rouge, lieutenant of the bastille, was secretly smitten 
with his fair captive. In order to divert her ennui, he induced her 
to enter into a playful correspondence with one "of her fellow-prison- 
ers, the Chevalier de Menil ; who was indirectly implicated in the 
Cellamare conspiracy, by having been the depositor of the Abbe 
Brigaut's papers. Maison-Rouge undertook to be the bearer of their 
letters, which only ran on the most trifling subjects; and he carried 
the complaisance so far as to procure them a few interviews. The 
result, under such romantic circumstances, was a mutual attachment. 



THE CELLAMARE CONSPIRATORS. 51 

The imprudent lieutenant soon perceived the state of Mademoiselle 
de Launay's feelings ; but, though he felt deeply grieved, he was too 
generous to profit by his power. He continued to favour occasional 
interviews between the lovers, and even to be the messenger of their 
correspondence. Though Mademoiselle de Launay's love for the 
chevalier appears to have been very sincere, the letters in which it 
is expressed do not convey the impression of a deep or fervent affec- 
tion. The style is invariably cold, precise, and elegant, and not- 
withstanding the occasional tenderness of the sentiments, it is difficult 
not to think with the Chevalier de Menil, that the feelings of the 
writer resided chiefly in her brain. Mademoiselle de Launay proved, 
however, more constant than the chevalier ; for though his passion 
at first seemed very ardent,, it cooled as he became accustomed to 
the romance of their intercourse. On leaving the bastille, he proved 
entirely faithless, and married another. 

Whilst love was thus beguiling the tedious hours of Mademoiselle 
de Launay's captivity, her royal mistress became so heartily weary 
of confinement, as to make her submission to the regent. She 
wrote him a letter in which she confessed her guilt, and, as she felt 
protected by her sex, laid the whole blame on herself, and com- 
pletely exonerated her husband. Though she spared her intimate 
friends, she heartlessly signalized her other accomplices to*fae re- 
gent's notice. Amongst those whom she betrayed were Pompadour, 
whom she treated with great contempt; Laval, Cellamare, and seve- 
ral of the Breton nobles. This letter, which was read in the regent's 
assembled council, has remained as an indelible stain on the charac- 
ter of the weak and selfish princess. Though she thus regained her 
freedom, Madame du Maine was highly indignant to see herself ex- 
posed : even whilst reaping the benefit of her treachery, she wished 
to be spared the shame it so fully deserved. Her husband was libe- 
rated about the same time ; he feigned great anger at the imprudent 
conduct of his wife, and refused to see her. Madame du Maine 
begged of the regent to intercede for her with him ; as he was not 
the dupe of the comedy they were acting, he ironically replied, that 
her power over her husband must be greater than his : she took this 
for a compliment, and, springing up from her seat, kissed him on 
both cheeks in spite of his resistance. Before six months were over, 
the Duke of Maine had forgiven his wife ; they resumed their for- 
mer mode of existence, and the little court of Sceaux was soon as 
gay as ever. 

The prisoners of inferior rank were more harshly treated : Laval, 
in particular, who never forgave Madame du Maine. On seeing the 
conspiracy discovered, the Cardinal of Polignac had sought an inter- 
view with the regent, to whom he solemnly protested his innocence. 
The prince, who only felt contempt for his weak character, merely 



52 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

exiled him to his Abbaye of Anchin, where the disappointed poli- 
tician resumed the composition of his Latin poem. De Mesmes 
wished to adopt a similar course, and assuring Mademoiselle de la 
Chausseraie that he was entirely guiltless, induced her to procure 
him a meeting with the regent, over whom she possessed some in- 
fluence. When the president had repeatedly asserted his innocence, 
the prince, who had heard him in silence, suddenly showed him the 
proofs of his guilt in his own handwriting, and left him with visible 
indignation. Mademoiselle de la Chausseraie' s intercession alone 
saved the culprit from the punishment his duplicity deserved. 

Although the regent asserted that he had four times more proof 
than he needed, in order to cause the Duke of Richelieu to be be- 
headed for high treason, the ambitious young nobleman was not 
punished with more than three months' imprisonment in the bas- 
tille. Mademoiselle de Yalois obtained his freedom from her father, 
by consenting to marry the Duke of Modena. Even his captivity 
proved gratifying to Richelieu's vanity; for, when it was known that 
the governor had allowed him to walk daily on the bastion of the 
fortress, ladies of rank deserted the Cours-la-Reine, and thronged in 
their carriages to the Boulevards, in order to catch a glimpse of the 
handsome prisoner. The unhappy Bretons suffered most: several 
of their leaders were publicly executed, while the rest expiated in 
exile their dream of provincial independence. 

Mademoiselle de Launay was liberated several months later than 
her mistress. This was owing to the honourable reluctance she felt 
to reveal anything likely to compromise Madame du Maine and her 
friends. When she was insidiously assured that the duchess au- 
thorized her to tell all she knew, she coolly replied, that if captivity 
had injured Madame du Maine's understanding, it had not produced 
the same effect upon her ; and that, not having been entrusted with 
any matter of importance, she had nothing to say. It was only on 
receiving a private message from Madame du Maine, that Mademoi- 
selle de Launay at length consented to disclose a few insignificant 
circumstances already known to the regent; the more important 
questions addressed to her she eluded with much prudence and saga- 
city. As her submission was what the regent chiefly wanted, he 
soon ordered her to be liberated. Thouo-h Madame du Maine had 
not forgotten her favourite attendant during their long separation, 
and had even personally interceded with the Duke of Orleans in or- 
der to obtain her freedom, she received her with more coldness than 
might have been anticipated : to judge, at least, from Mademoiselle 
de Launay' s account. "I arrived at Sceaux in the evening; Ma- 
dame du Maine was at the promenade. I went to meet her in the 
garden. She saw me, caused her caleche to stop, and said, ' Ah ! 
' there is Mademoiselle de Launay ; I am glad to see you/ I ap- 



THE SOCIETY OF SCEAUX. 53 

proached, she embraced me, and went on." Such was Mademoiselle 
de Launay's welcome, after a captivity of a year and a half, endured 
for the sake of her mistress. Notwithstanding this cold and trans- 
parent selfishness, the duchess soon restored her confidence, and as 
much affection as she was capable of feeling, to Mademoiselle de Lau- 
nay. Her position was no longer that of femme de chambre; and 
the honourable firmness she had displayed in the cause of Madame du 
Maine, made her be considered as a personal friend, and drew her 
universal consideration. At the same time her want of birth and rank 
still subjected her to so many annoyances and humiliations, that she 
resolved to marry for the sake of acquiring a position in the world. As 
the Chevalier de Menil had proved inconstant, she determined to be- 
stow her hand on M. de Maison-Rouge, who was still devotedly attach- 
ed to her, and whose noble character she fully appreciated; but he un- 
fortunately died before the project could be fulfilled. Several years 
after this event, Madame du Maine married her protegee to the Ba- 
ron of Staal, a Swiss officer in the French service. This marriage, 
which was strictly one of convenance on either side, proved, how- 
ever, tolerably happy, and gave Madame de Staal a rank in the 
household of the duchess. 

The political part of Madame du Maine ended with her captivity. 
However much her ambitious spirit might long for new intrigues, 
the policy of the regent, in marrying one of his daughters to the 
Prince of Asturias and betrothing the Infanta to Louis XV., de- 
stroyed her last chance of disturbing the kingdom by seeking the 
aid of Spain. Her power had never rested on a sufficiently broad 
principle to resist this attack : it was based on narrow court intrigues, 
and did not even possess the sympathy of those who conspired with 
her: each had his own private views, which impaired the unity of 
the plot. Even if it had not been discovered by accident, the Cel* 
lamare conspiracy must have proved a failure : it had none of the 
elements of success or popularity. 

Though the little court of Sceaux continued to be the resort of 
many celebrated and remarkable individuals, it was never again so 
brilliant as it had been during the first years of the regency. Dis- 
appointed ambition had soured the temper of the duchess, whilst 
the activity of her mind, wasted on trifles, added to the ennui which 
marked her life. To destroy the comfort of others, to complain of 
her melancholy fate, and carry her ennui everywhere with her, 
seemed henceforth the destiny of the once gay princess. But the 
world, which had treated her youthful caprices with indulgence, 
proved more severe as she advanced in life, and partly justified her 
complaints, by forsaking her. Though these circumstances caused 
her literary influence to decline, it was more real and more lasting 
than her political power. If she gave no new impulse to genius, 

5* 



54 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

she assisted its development, and had enough taste to feel the supe- 
riority of Yoltaire, when the envy of his contemporaries proclaimed 
him inferior to Crebillon. The chief merit of Madame du Maine 
did not consist, however, in her appreciation of genius, but in hav- 
ing contributed to give a style to conversation. The purity, clear- 
ness, and elegance which marked her own language, became charac- 
teristic of her little court. The delightful memoirs of Madame de 
Staal are, indeed, calculated to give a high idea of the wit and 
talents of the visitors of Sceaux. They are written with singular 
elegance, and display a tact, judgment, and knowledge of the world, 
evidently acquired by long intercourse with a polite and refined 
society. 

At the same time it must be confessed that, notwithstanding 
many points in her character which command esteem, it is difficult 
to imagine a more cold and unpoetical personage than Madame de 
Staal. Any feeling like tenderness, enthusiasm, or fervour, was 
evidently foreign to her nature. It is alleged, that, when Fontenelle 
asked her if her memoirs were to be very faithful, she replied, that 
she did not intend drawing a full length portrait of herself, and 
would only give her bust to the public. But, though she may have 
concealed some circumstances of her life, the narrative she has left 
of it affords a very clear knowledge of her character. The heart- 
less manner in which her marriage was conducted, the candour of 
her regret not to have married old M. Dacier, when she learns that 
he died so shortly after the period fixed for their intended union, 
are such clear indications of selfishness, as would greatly lessen the 
reader's sympathy, were it not unjust to make Madame de Staal 
bear the sole blame of the vices of the age and of the world in 
which she lived. 

With all its wit, politeness, and refinement, the little society of 
Sceaux ever remained cold and heartless. There was no other link 
between its members than ennui and the desire of amusement : they 
were acquaintances, not friends. The authors received amongst 
them belonged, with few exceptions, to that class of writers whose 
ephemeral compositions seldom outlive the epoch of their birth. 
The cold brilliancy of style, and egotism of the favourite poets of 
Sceaux, render it hopeless to look for some trace of a high or noble 
feeling amongst their forgotten productions. Their scepticism itself 
was too heartless to admit those lofty and generous aspirations, 
whieh, with so many faults and errors, nevertheless characterized 
the philosophy of the eighteenth century. This frivolousness was 
partly the cause that, though so long in existence, the society of 
Madame du Maine left few tokens of its being, when it had once 
been dissolved by the death of the duchess. Its members dispersed, 
and joined new coteries; but no work of genius, fostered under 



THE COUNTESS OF VERRUE. 55 

their care, has remained. Allusions in contemporary records, and 
the graceful memoirs of Madame de Staal, are the only traces now 
left of that once brilliant assemblage; which, for splendour and 
elegance, was then unrivalled, and only wanted women of heart and 
men of genius. 



CHAPTER in. 



The Countess of Verrue. — Madame de Lambert. — State of French society 
during the regency and the period immediately following it.-^The nun 
Tencin. — Madame de Prie. 



"Ci git, dans une paix profonde, 
Cette Dame de Volupte, 
Qui, pour plus de surete, 
Fit son paradis dans ce monde." 

Such was the epitaph, composed by herself, which the Countess 
of Yerrue, one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of 
Parisian society, desired to have engraved on her tombstone. And 
in those four lines lies embodied all the epicurean philosophy of the 
regency. 

The Dame de Volupte, as she was now named by her friends, had 
once been a pure and lovely woman. She belonged to the proud 
and ancient family of Luynes, and she was early married to the 
Count of Yerrue, who took her to Turin. Her great beauty attracted 
the attention of Amedee Victor, Duke of Savoy and King of Sicily. 
She long resisted his addresses, with a constancy and virtue rare for 
the age in which she lived. The persecution of her husband's rela- 
tives, whose protection she implored in vain, and the temptation of 
ruling over a court where her virtue only excited ridicule, at length 
proved stronger than her scruples: she became the mistress of the 
prince. His love was very ardent and sincere: it only increased 
with years; and it ended by heartily wearying Madame de Yerrue. 
The children she had by her lover, the power she exercised at 
his court, the wealth she enjoyed, could not fix her affections. She 
eloped from Turin with her brother, the Chevalier de Luynes, who 
assisted her escape. A great quantity of valuable medals disap- 
peared with her from the duke's palace: part were sold in England, 
to a member of the royal family, and part to Madame, in Paris; 
where the faithless countess established herself. She led an elegant 
and luxurious life, suited to her profession of faith. She was rich, 



56 WOMAN IN FEANCE. 

prodigal, and spent upwards of a hundred thousand liyres a year on 
curiosities and rare books, which she never read. Her library was, 
in plays and novels, the most complete a private person had yet pos- 
sessed. She loved company, when it was, like herself, brilliant, 
voluptuous, and sceptical. Voltaire admired and flattered her; she 
contracted a close intimacy with the poet La Faye, whom she often 
assisted in his compositions. It is said that she never spoke of her 
former lover, of her children, or expressed the least regret for the 
step she had taken, — a step which, be it understood, did not spring 
from principle. Her epitaph was a true index to her character. 
She was generally considered attractive and agreeable; and was, 
probably, as much so as a heartless woman, without love, faith, or 
purity, can ever be. 

Another lady already alluded to, the Marchioness of Lambert, 
known by some agreeable and sensible productions, also opened her 
house to the wits of the clay. Every Tuesday she received her 
friends. She was rich, amiable, though no longer young; her table 
was excellent, and she ranked amongst the few women who never 
permitted any gambling to take place beneath their roof. La Mothe, 
Fontenelle, Mairan, Mademoiselle de Launay, and Madame du Maine, 
were her principal friends. Her influence was quiet, but consider- 
able. She confessed to d'Argenson that she could name whom she 
liked to the French academy, and it was known that no member was 
ever elected without her consent. This bureau d' esprit was one of 
the first established in the eighteenth century. It took the tone and 
character of the lady by whom it was presided over, and was, ac- 
cordingly, more decorous than brilliant. Madame de Lambert being 
strictly devout, and a close observer of the convenances, her society 
was only an assembly of wits; it had none of the features of the 
bureaux d' esprit where the philosophers subsequently held their 
meetings. 

Several other ladies exercised a similar influence. Madame de 
Lassay, the witty wife of a witty husband, was held in high favour 
at the court of Madame du Maine; Madame de Simiane, the accom- 
plished grand-daughter of Madame de Sevigne, might, had she only 
been more wealthy, have taken a place amongst the influential ladies 
of the day. From Madame de Verrue down to the least important 
of the women then in repute, there was, however, no circle which 
could compare with the two great societies of Madame du Maine and 
the nun Tencin. Madame du Maine is already known to the reader. 
We shall speak of Madame de Tencin presently. 

The coteries over which women presided did not absorb all the 
social faculties of the Parisian world. Many men, not choosing to 
submit to female influence, resorted to the two famous cafes of 
Grradet and Procope; which then enjoyed a grave and learned re- 



FRENCH SOCIETY DURING THE REGENCY. 57 

putation. There might be seen daily J. B. Rousseau, the unhappy 
and guilty poet; Boindin, the atheist; the observant and satirical 
Duclos; Piron, La Mothe, and a host of philosophic authors; 
amongst whom often appeared the brilliant and universal Voltaire. 
Their discussions were chiefly bitter attacks, more or less disguised, 
against society and religion; and though the regent was too careless 
to persecute them for their opinions, he was often compelled to do 
so by the prejudices of a world which was intolerant, without hav- 
ing either faith or morality. These philosophic sceptics, the pre- 
cursors of the encyclopaedists, were, however, greatly outnumbered 
by such epicureans as the Dame de Volupte; who, reckless of the 
future, only wished to spend the present in luxurious indifference. 

This easy scepticism was often united to the grossest credulity : 
Philip of Orleans seemed to have imparted his own mingled atheism 
and superstition to the whole nation. The wild fables of the Rosi- 
crucians, with their enthusiastic dreams of elementary spirits, still 
found eager dupes. Amongst other adventurers, an individual, who 
took the name of Saint Maurice, persuaded a large number of 
wealthy and titled individuals, that he could enable them to hold 
communication with sylphs, gnomes, salamanders, and ondines. 
The disciples met, on stated days, in a darkened room, where Saint 
Maurice, acting as high priest, addressed a cabalistic invocation to 
the genie Alael. When it was over, he went round the apartment, 
and received from each individual present a sealed note, containing 
a request addressed to the spirit. The notes being all collected, 
Saint Maurice approached the altar, and seemed to cast them into a 
burning brazier ; but the notes he threw in had all been prepared 
beforehand for the purpose, and he carefully preserved the real ones, 
in order to frame verbal replies, which he might deliver to his adepts 
on their next meeting. The credulous dupes took it for granted 
that, as the answers they received always had some reference to 
their requests, there really existed an intercourse between Alael and 
Saint Maurice. This induced them to grant more readily the de- 
mands for large sums, which the omnipotent genie often addressed 
to them through his high priest. The police put an end to the 
whole matter, by throwing Saint Maurice into the bastille. 

This feverish thirst of excitement greatly favoured the introduc- 
tion of Law's financial system. The country was on the eve of a 
bankruptcy, when the adventurous Scotchman proposed to the regent 
to supply the deficiencies of the treasury by a paper currency. The 
Duke of Orleans entered eagerly into this scheme, which had the 
most astonishing success. A gambling spirit seemed to have sud- 
denly seized on the whole nation : pleasures and intrigues were for- 
gotten in the absorbing pursuit of wealth. The sudden rise of for- 
tunes increased the growing sense of equality. Law himself, as 



58 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

though, conscious of his paramount importance, behaved with haughty 
insolence to the nobles who waited for hours in his antechambers. 
Birth and rank daily yielded more to wealth. Women entered 
eagerly into all the intrigues which were then carried on, in order 
to obtain Mississippi shares. Elegant and high-born ladies could 
be seen standing in the cooler's stall of the Rue Quincampoix, 
waiting with unwearied patience for the favourable moment to ap- 
proach the shrine of Plutus. The instance of Madame de Boucher, 
who caused her coachman to upset her before Law's door, thus to 
obtain the interview he had refused to grant her, was by no means 
a rare example of the lengths to which these female stockjobbers 
were prepared to go in order to carry their point. Some, faithful 
to their old system, intrigued to enrich their friends. The Countess 
of Verrue and the Marchioness of Lassai resolved to make the for- 
tune of the Abbe Terrasson, known for his deep learning and great 
simplicity. They procured for him about eight or nine hundred 
thousand Hvres of Law's notes; the Abbe having gravely assured 
them that he could not trust himself with more than a million. In 
order to prove the excellence of Law's system, he wrote a work upon 
it, which appeared the very day that the system began to decline. 
On seeing his fortune lost for the second time in his life, the Abbe 
merely observed, " Thank Heaven ! I am now again out of trouble/' 
This trait of naivete made Madame de Lassai exclaim, that only a 
man of much wit could be so foolish. 

France did not recover for a long time from the failure of Law's 
disastrous scheme ; and it was only when the excitement caused by 
it had entirely subsided, that literary productions once more absorbed 
public attention. The literature of that period is chiefly of a light 
and frivolous character; for, persons of rank of both sexes being 
then almost equally idle and averse to heavy works, tales and novels 
became the vehicle through which the gravest writers were com- 
pelled to submit their ideas to the public. Montesquieu frankly 
confessed that some of his works had been written for frizzled and 
powdered heads; and in order to ensure the success of his admirable 
satire, the Persian letters, he was compelled to give it the form of a 
novel. From this necessity resulted' that singular mixture of phi- 
losophy and romance which characterizes the productions of the 
period. The tales of Marivaux, in particular, show the analytic 
tendency of the times. Every emotion of the heroine, or secret 
spring of action, is explained with tedious exactness, and the most 
frivolous coquette enters into as detailed an account of her feelings 
as might be given by any metaphysical Helvetius. The traces of 
this philosophic spirit are every w here to be met with, and we find 
the eloquent Massillon, when addressing the youthful Louis XV., 



MADAME DE TENCIN. 59 

in the chapel of Versailles, reminding him of the election of kings 
and of the rights of the people. 

But, notwithstanding the efforts of philosophers, the great ma- 
jority of the society to whom they sought to inculcate their doctrines 
remained essentially frivolous. During a whole season, nothing was 
so fashionable, for both men and women, as to cut up costly engrav- 
ings, and stick the mutilated figures on fans and fire-screens; to 
make up ribbon knots came next in vogue; the childish game of 
cup-and-ball was also one of the favourite amusements of this indolent 
aristocracy. Some noblemen sought to distinguish themselves by the 
singularity of their conduct. The Duke of G-esvres kept open house 
during a fit of illness. Forty persons daily sat down at his table; 
only about twenty of his privileged courtiers, whom he had pre- 
sented with splendid green suits, were admitted into his presence. 
They found him in a magnificent apartment, richly dressed in green, 
reclining on a couch, and making up ribbon knots. Another noble- 
man, the Duke of Epernon, placed his delight in surgical operations ; 
and, by mingled threats and promises, compelled his unhappy vas- 
sals to let him exercise his skill upon them. 

Women rendered themselves conspicuous for the eagerness with 
which they entered into all these frivolous amusements. The cele- 
brated singers, Mademoiselle le Pelissier and Mademoiselle le Maure, 
divided the court ladies into two rival parties, each of which spared 
no effort to ensure the success of its favourite, by crushing her 
rival. Amongst the women whose intellect and taste rendered them, 
however, superior to such trifling occupations, a few were remarkable 
for the tact and discernment with which they gradually drew around 
them some of the most eminent men of the day. Of these coteries, 
for such they were, none was more agreeable than that presided over 
by Madarne de Tencin, the ex-nun. 

This clever, handsome, and unprincipled woman, had been com- 
pelled by her father to take the veil at au early age, and to enter the 
convent of the Augustines of Montfleuri. The gay and worldly life 
led by the inmates of this sacred asylum, which stood at the end of 
a fashionable promenade in the town of G-renoble, had long been a 
source of scandal to the faithful. The austere Cardinal le Camus 
vainly sought to effect a lasting reform : his admonitions were un- 
heeded by the recluses, who dail}~ received a large and brilliant 
company, consisting of the young and gay of both sexes. The visit- 
ors of the convent did not remain long unconscious of the attrac- 
tions, both mental and personal, of Mademoiselle de Tencin. She 
was, however, rather fascinating than strictly beautiful ; aud there 
was something feline and unpleasant, at first, in her half-closed eyes ; 
but that seeming languor and indolence contrasted so strikingly with 
the vivacity of her wit, as to add greatly to the irresistible charm of 



60 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

her whole appearance. Her manners were pliant and insinuating ; 
her tact was unerring 1 . She never seemed conscious of her own 
attractions, but practised the sure flattery of appearing absorbed by 
whatever others said and did. The fascination which she exercised 
over the abbess and her confessor, procured her unusual freedoms ; 
she was allowed to receive private visits, and to leave the convent, 
in order to return them, as often as she pleased. But the more she 
saw of the world, from which she was shut out for ever by her vows, 
the more her ambitious and intriguing spirit, which already revealed 
to her the advantages she might derive from her wit and beauty, 
made her long to enter its forbidden precincts. She adroitly learned 
from her religious director the steps by which she might regain her 
freedom. She then protested against her vows, and succeeded in 
being transferred to the Chapter of Neuville : the obligation of celi- 
bacy was the only one under which she still laboured ) the freedom 
enjoyed by the sisters of her order, during the last century, being 
sufficiently notorious. Some time after this, the young canoness 
went to Paris to reside with her brother, the Abbe de Tencin. Re- 
port said that various scandalous adventures, of which she was the 
heroine, had compelled her to take this step. 

Madame de Tencin, for she henceforth took that name, was soon 
surrounded by a host of admirers ; amongst the most assiduous were 
Bolingbroke, then in France, and Fontenelle. The latter was so 
thoroughly fascinated, that, though in general little disposed to exert 
himself in favour of his friends, he procured Madame de Tencin' s 
freedom from the papal court, according to her ardent wish. Being 
now released from every monastic tie, she became more imprudent 
in her conduct : she had several notorious intrigues; and, amongst 
the rest, one with Canon-Destouches, which ended in the birth of a 
son, who was exposed on the steps of the church of Saint Jean-le- 
Bond, on the 17th of November, 1717. The child, thus forsaken 
by its heartless mother, was found and brought up by a poor gla- 
zier's wife, named Bousseau, and proved to be the future great 
mathematician, D' Alembert. Though it may be alleged that, resid- 
ing as she did in the house of her brother, a priest, Madame de 
Tencin could not recognize her child without ruining all the Abbe's 
future prospects of aggrandizement, she might, however, have pro- 
vided for it ; but the fear of future detection overbalanced every 
other consideration. 

It was about this time that Madame de Tencin began to take an 
active share in her brother's political intrigues. After vainly trying 
to influence the regent, she stooped to Dubois, and entered into a 
degrading connection with him, which her biographers have vainly 
sought to excuse by ascribing it to her sisterly affection. Dubois 
was incapable of loving her, or, indeed, any human being, but he 



MADAME DE PRIE. 61 

admired her talents ; and, at a time when Madame du Maine was 
enlisting society itself against the regent, he felt the value of 
Madame de Tencin' s influence over the brilliant and select company 
which assembled at her brother's house. The Abbe's easy con- 
science was also peculiarly acceptable : to him Dubois entrusted the 
task of converting Law, when the Scotchman wished to abjure his 
original creed, in order to become minister. De Tencin retired with 
his proselyte to Melun, in order to avoid the sarcasms of the Paris- 
ians : Law was said to have rewarded his complaisance by a large 
share of paper money. This accusation was strengthened by one of 
simony, which was pro\ed against the Abbe de Tencin in his own 
handwriting, at the very moment that he offered to attest his inno- 
cence by oath. Though this disgraceful exposure occurred before 
the parliament of Paris, Dubois had, nevertheless, the effrontery to 
send the Abbe to Rome, in order to forward the negociations relative 
to his cardinalship. The envoy was worthy of the task. The Abbe 
de Tencin signalized himself at Rome by his profligate and un- 
principled conduct. He opened the letters which Roman prelates 
imprudently sent to Paris through the French ambassador, and 
commissioned his sister to seal them up again, and cause them to be 
delivered to the persons to whom they were addressed. Madame 
de Tencin was so careless of public opinion, that she communicated 
to Duclos, the historian, the correspondence between herself and her 
brother, in which these facts were recorded. When the Abbe de 
Tencin returned from Rome, he was rewarded with the Archbishop- 
rick of Embrun : he aimed, however, at the cardinal's hat ; but the 
death of Dubois put an end to his hopes of favour, and threw him 
and his sister once more into the shade. 

In 1723, six months after the death of his corrupt minister, the 
regent was suddenly carried off by a fit of apoplexy. In the shock 
and confusion which followed this event, the young king was easily 
persuaded, by interested counsellors, to name his kinsman, the Duke 
of Bourbon, prime minister. The passions of this prince were 
stronger than his judgment ; they had rendered him the slave of 
the Marchioness of Prie, who henceforth governed in his name. 
This ambitious and violent woman, who was remarkable for her 
beauty, had first endeavoured to fascinate the regent; but on learn- 
ing that he allowed his mistresses no political influence, she directed 
all her powers of seduction towards the Duke of Bourbon. Her 
obscure origin affords another proof of the growing influence which 
had then been already acquired by wealth. Her father Plenoeuf 
was a wealthy financier, whom his practical intelligence and unscru- 
pulous conscience had raised from the lowest ranks to considerable 
affluence. His wife, who was celebrated for her wit, beauty, and in- 
trigues, educated her daughter with great care, and prided herself 
G 



62 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

on her dawning beauty, until she perceived that the young girl 
aimed at becoming her rival in the little court of adorers with which 
she was surrounded. The bitter and disgraceful hostility which 
henceforth existed between the mother and her child, compelled 
M. Plenoeuf to marry his daughter to the Marquess of Prie. Though 
the unnatural rivals were thus separated, their mutual hatred re- 
mained unabated. 

The insolence and haughtiness of Madame de Prie, when her lover 
was at the head of affairs, knew no bounds. Her first act was to 
persecute with vindictive eagerness all the friends of her mother 
whom it was in her power to injure. Though Voltaire declares that 
she possessed, 

"Un esprit juste, gracieux, 
Solide dans le serieux, 
Et ckarmant dans les bagatelles/' 

Madame de Prie was evidently incapable of directing the affairs of a 
kingdom. Her avidity was excessive : she not only received the 
large pension from England which had been granted to Dubois, but 
squandered money with the greatest extravagance, and urged her 
lover to raise the taxes : she directed the committee of finances her- 
self, through the agency of her creatures the brothers Paris, whom 
she had raised to high posts, in order to act under their name. 
Madame de Prie soon felt it was necessary that she should convince 
her lover of her great talents, so that she might become indispen- 
sable to him as minister as well as mistress ; the general ambition 
of the French favourites of the eighteenth century. She adopted 
the following stratagem, well calculated to fulfil her purpose. Every 
financial project destined to be submitted to the prince was first 
secretly concerted between his mistress and her agents. The com- 
pliant financiers purposely left in their written plans many errors, 
with which they took care to acquaint Madame de Prie. These 
errors passed undetected by the duke, whose talents were by no 
means first-rate. Madame cle Prie of course discovered and rectified 
them at once. The brothers Paris uttered well-feigned exclamations 
of admiration, recognised the profound judgment of Madame la 
Marquise, and hastened to adopt her suggestions as the wisest which 
could possibly have been made. The duke, amazed at the extraor- 
dinary intelligence of his clever mistress, congratulated himself on 
being able to receive her assistance. So great became her power, 
that, notwithstanding his own personal reluctance, she made him 
adopt the most exacting and arbitrary measures. Amongst other 
acts of tyranny attributed to her, is the renewal of the persecution 
against the Protestants : she had not even the excuse of bigotry for 
this act of intolerance, being an open and professed atheist. Her 



MADAME DE PRIE. 63 

power over her lover was so great that, wlien he wished to marry 
Mademoiselle de Vennandois, his sister, to the young Louis XV., 
Madame de Prie, before giving her assent to the marriage, resolved 
to call in disguise on the princess, who was then in a convent, in 
order to ascertain whether she was likely to obtain over the king 
that empire necessary to her views and those of the Duke of Bour- 
bon. She saw her, and was charmed with her wit and beauty, 
until she unfortunately asked her if she had ever heard of Madame 
de Prie, and what she thought of her. The reply of the young 
princess, reared up in conventual austerity, far from a corrupt court, 
was so candid, that Madame de Prie left the monastery highly in- 
censed, and vowing that Mademoiselle de Yermandois should never 
be queen of France. But as both she and the Duke of Bourbon 
were anxious to see the king married, without waiting until the lit- 
tle infanta to whom he was betrothed should be of age, they chose 
Mary Leczinska, daughter of Stanislaus, the dethroned monarch of 
Poland, as his wife. Madame de Prie carefully impressed on the 
mind of the young queen, that to her she was indebted for her 
crown ; but though the timid Mary Leczinska acknowledged the 
obligation, she possessed so little influence over her husband that 
she could not consolidate the power of the marchioness ; whose im- 
perious temper soon caused her own ruin and that of her lover. 
Madame de Prie had long noticed, with secret displeasure, the in- 
fluence which Fleury, the beloved preceptor of Louis XV., had ob- 
tained over his royal pupil ; she signalized him to the Duke of 
Bourbon as a dangerous rival, whom it was absolutely necessary to 
banish from the king's presence. The duke was so imprudent as 
to obey this suggestion. On discovering that the Bishop of Frejus 
was gone, Louis XV. fell into deep melancholy; but so little was 
he accustomed to the exercise of power that one of his courtiers, the 
Duke of Mortemart, was obliged to remind him, on seeing his grief, 
that he could recall Fleury if he wished. The king eagerly took 
the hint : Fleury came back from exile, and, prompted by his own per- 
sonal fears as well as by a sense of duty, he exposed to his pupil 
the arbitrary conduct of the Duke of Bourbon and of his mistress : 
they were immediately sent to different places of exile by order of 
the king. Madame de Prie bore her misfortune with fortitude, for 
the space of a week. At the end of that time she sank into a de- 
sponding state of mind, and died in 1727 ; of ennui, according to 
Voltaire, and of poison administered by herself, according to other 
accounts. Her brief power left no other traces in France than the 
hatred and contempt which long remained attached to her name. 

Although the regency ends, strictly speaking, with the majority 
of Louis XV., which occurred before the death of the Duke of 
Orleans, the extreme youth of the king, and the facility with which 



64 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

he allowed himself to be guided by his counsellors, really prolonged 
that period for several years. The state of society, moreover, did 
not undergo any great modification, but remained almost the same 
under the regency, and the successive ministries of Dubois, the 
Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Bourbon, and Fleury, Bishop of 
Frejus, who succeeded to the latter. 

The preceptor of Louis XV. was no sooner in power, than the 
Archbishop of Embrun and Madame de Tencin, endeavoured to put 
themselves at the head of the religious party which again persecuted 
the Jansenists. De Tencin presided over the council of Embrun, 
which deposed the virtuous Bishop of Senez as guilty of heresy; 
whilst his sister so signalized herself by her zeal in that capital, that 
Fleury, who disliked religious discussions, sent her word to leave 
Paris. She obeyed; but was soon recalled, through the influence 
of her brother. The suicide of La Frenaye, which preceded this 
event, had already added new scandal to that associated with her 
name. This gentleman, who had been one of her favoured lovers, 
shot himself, at her house, in a fit of jealousy or despair. In an 
incoherent document which he left behind him, he declared her .to 
be the cause of his death. The accusation was taken in a literal 
sense, and Madame de Tencin was incarcerated in the bastille. She 
was, however, soon released; for, though it was evident that she 
had behaved unjustifiably towards the unhappy La Frenaye, there 
did not exist the least proof of her supposed guilt. 

Neither the scandal caused by this event, nor her total and noto- 
rious want of moral sense, seem, however, to have prevented Ma- 
dame de Tencin from being well received in society. She was a 
profound dissembler, and those who knew her best could not resist 
the soothing charm of her manners. The writings with which she 
amused her old age, and which were published after her death, are 
calculated to give a high idea of her intellect, as well as of a deli- 
cacy and nobleness of mind, contradicted by the whole tenor of her 
life. The close of the tale entitled Memoires de Comminges is 
exquisitely beautiful and pathetic; and, in the opinion of many 
readers, M. Villemain committed no exaggeration when he termed it 
sublime. The morality of her productions is, at the same time, of 
a conventional kind, like that of Madame de Genlis' novels : it 
reminds us of the writer, whose apparent gentleness and utter want 
of heart partly justified the Abbe Trublet's severe remark, when he 
once heard her mildness praised — " Ay, if she wanted to poison you, 
she would choose the mildest poison." 

Madame de Tencin possessed a deep knowledge of human nature, 
especially of its evil side ; and a keen perception of character, which 
can explain one source of her power : we easily govern that which 
we understand. Her observation respecting Fontenelle, that his 



MADAME DE FERRIOL. 65 

heart was only a second brain, was singularly true and appropriate. 
One of her sayings has been repeated since under so many various 
forms as to deserve quotation : — " Clever people/' she remarked, 
"often commit mistakes from not believing the world to be stupid 
enough, or as stupid as it is." It was not, however, through the 
charms of her intellect alone, or by tact and sagacity, that Madame 
de Tencin drew around her such men as Montesquieu, Fontenelle, 
Mairan, Helvetius, and Marivaux. With all her faults, she was 
capable of friendship, and almost as ready to intrigue for her ac- 
quaintances as for her brother and herself. One of the great seduc- 
tions of her society was, that her wit never took a dictatorial aspect; 
her finesse itself was admirably veiled by an appearance of quiet 
simplicity and good sense. Few women understood so well as she 
did the art of gathering together men of the most varied tastes and 
opinions; of influencing them without letting them even suspect her 
power, and of exercising it for the enjoyment of all. However great 
her other faults might be, in this art she was at least sincere ; and 
the intellectual pleasure she diffused around her was felt by none 
more keenly than by the clever and intriguing nun Tencin. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Madame de Ferriol. — Mademoiselle Ai'sse. 

Amongst the ladies who shared the privilege of presiding over 
an elegant and chosen society, was Madame de Ferriol, sister of 
Madame de Tencin ; handsome and intriguing like her, but without 
her wit and suppleness. She was early married to M. de Ferriol, a 
magistrate, a gourmand, and a Moliniste, who cared little about his 
wife, and philosophically permitted her to have a long and open 
liaison with the Marechal d'Uxelles. 

This connection with a minister added to Madame de Ferriors 
power. Her house was frequented by all those who had favours to ask ; 
every class and every party were represented in her society. The 
roues came there, with the volatile Madame de Parabere, mistress of 
their patron the regent. Young Madame du Deffand, whose wit 
and sparkling eyes had already created a sensation at the little court 
of Madame clu Maine, occasionally deserted it for the Parisian circle 
presided over by the magistrate's wife. Pont-de-Veyle and D'Ar- 
gental, Madame de Ferriol' s two sons, introduced a few of their lite- 
rary friends ; amongst the rest young Arouet, now metamorphosed 

6* 



(56 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

into Arouet de Voltaire. The presence of Mare'chal d'Uxelles, and 
the relationship of his mistress to Madame de Tencin, attracted the 
restless exile Bolingbroke. He was generally accompanied by a 
very handsome, witty, and agreeable widow, named Madame de Yil- 
lette, whom he afterwards acknowledged as his second wife. 

As long as the Marechal proved constant, his handsome mistress 
remained in vogue ) but his love visibly cooled with age, and with 
the decline of her charms. Madame de Ferriol had never been very 
witty, and she grew ill-tempered and morose with years. The world 
might have become, like the marechal, indifferent and estranged, if 
the attractions she no longer possessed had not fortunately been 
supplied by the presence of a young and lovely Circassian slave, 
named Aisse, whom she had brought up, and who resided beneath 
her roof. 

The history of this unhappy and interesting girl, is one of those 
romantic episodes which never appear to such advantage as when 
standing forth on the obscurity of a background like the regency. 
The truth and earnestness of the affection which united the beautiful 
Circassian and her devoted lover, the Chevalier d'Aydie, contrast so 
deeply with the heartlessness of the world around them, that pos- 
terity, disarmed of its severity, has almost learned to look upon their 
errors as virtues. The origin of the connection between Mademoi- 
selle Aisse and her protectress was singular and romantic. 

M. de Ferriol had an elder brother, who travelled a great deal in 
the East, and was sent on various diplomatic missions to Turkey, 
where he led a life of oriental despotism and licentiousness. He 
was in the habit of purchasing beautiful female slaves, two of whom 
he once brought to France: he kept one for himself, the other he 
gave to his friend, the Comte of Nogent, who was so deeply ena- 
moured of her that he did not hesitate to make her his wife. M. de 
Ferriol' s slave probably died young, for there is no other record of 
her fate save that she came to France with her master. In the year 
1698, M. de Ferriol was passing through the slave-market at Con- 
stantinople, when he was struck with the surpassing loveliness of a 
young female child exposed for sale. He questioned her owner, and 
learned that the child had been carried off by the Turks from the 
palace of a Circassian prince, whom they had massacred with all his 
people : she was supposed to be his daughter, for her ravishers had 
found her surrounded by attendants. Moved with compassion at 
her unhappy fate, and also actuated by a less pure and disinterested 
motive, the French nobleman purchased the young Haidee or Aisse 
— the two names appear to be identical — for the sum of fifteen 
hundred livres. On returning to France, he confided the child to 
his sister-in-law, Madame cle Ferriol, and then went back once more 



MADEMOISELLE AISSE. 0)7 

to Constantinople, where he resided as ambassador until the year 
1711. 

Aisse, as she still continued to he called, although she had been 
baptized under the name of Charlotte, was kindly treated by Madame 
de Ferriol, by whom she was brought up on a footing of equality 
with her two sons. D'Argental and Pont-de-Yeyle always loved 
their adopted sister very tenderly. The beauty of Mademoiselle 
Aisse was remarkable, even in that age of beautiful women : it 
blended the passion and fire of the East with the classical outline of 
Grecian loveliness and the animated grace of France. She was 
about the middle height, of an elegant figure and a graceful carriage j 
her complexion had, in youth, that dazzling bloom and transparent 
purity which is still the boast of the fine Circassian races ; her eyes, 
dark, soft, and lustrous, shone with truly eastern splendour; her 
oval and delicate countenance expressed the goodness, candour, and 
finesse of her character. 

Aisse attracted considerable attention in the circle of Madame de 
Ferriol : her extreme loveliness was not her only charm. If she was 
neither brilliant nor witty, she possessed, however, all the tact and 
delicacy of a fine nature : she spoke well, but little, for her disposi- 
tion was naturally retiring. It is easy to judge of what her con- 
versational powers may have been, by the letters she has left. The 
style in which they are written, though natural and elegant, is fre- 
quently careless and incorrect : it has not that precision and purity 
of idiom which characterize Madame de Staal's language, nor the 
strength and wit of Madame du DerTand's. The merits of Made- 
moiselle Aisse's writings are by no means literary; they spring from 
the truth and tenderness of her heart, from the natural humility and 
delicacy of her mind, ancl from the sincere and honest abhorrence 
she ever displays against the profligacy and vices of the age. It was 
this union of rare personal attractions, and of the most noble and 
amiable qualities of the heart, which led a contemporary poet to 
exclaim : — 

"Aisse de la Grece epuisa la beaute; 
Elle a de la France emprunte 
Les charmes de 1'esprit. de l'air, et du langage. 

Pour le coeur je n'y comprends rien; 
Dans quel lieu s'est-elle adressee? 
II n'en est plus comme le sien 

Depuis l'age d : or ou l'Astree." 

Aisse was in all the bloom and freshness of her beauty when M. 
de Ferriol returned to France. He was on the verge of seventy; 
his protegee was barely seventeen. He endeavoured, nevertheless, 
to inspire her with a more tender feeling than gratitude; and when 
he failed entirely, he asserted his right over her in a tone of oriental 



68 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

despotism. He reminded her that she was his : that he had bought 
her; and he ended by pleading his love, and offering her a share in 
all his possessions. In order to escape this persecution, Aisse ap- 
pealed to her adopted brother, D'Argental; whose interference and 
remonstrances at length convinced her ancient admirer of the use- 
lessness of his suit. M. de Ferriol consented to be reasonable, 
and to receive from Aisse — all she could give — the affection and 
devotedness of a daughter. It was in this character that she re- 
mained with him until his death. If M. de Ferriol, notwithstanding 
his years, could not remain insensible to the grace and beauty of the 
young Circassian, others found the task equally difficult. Boling- 
broke did not fall in love with her, probably because he knew that 
love would be unavailing; but in his letters he alludes, with evident 
affection and tenderness, to "the dear Circassian," and "the charm- 
ing Aisse;" declaring, "that he would sooner have found the secret 
of pleasing her than the quadrature of the circle/' 

The regent, who met Mademoiselle Aisse at the house of his 
mistress, Madame de Parabere — such was the profligacy of the age, 
that none of the young girl's protectors objected to her intimacy 
with this abandoned woman — expressed his admiration in more 
explicit language. Stung and astonished with her coldness, which 
only heightened his passion, he endeavoured to seduce her by the 
most brilliant offers. Aisse firmly and indignantly refused; and 
from that time carefully shunned his presence. Madame de Ferriol 
learned, with much vexation, the scruples of the young girl; who 
had certainly not been reared in a very virtuous atmosphere. That 
she should have refused to become the mistress of her old brother- 
in-law was perfectly right and justifiable; but that the same reluc- 
tance should extend to the first prince of the blood and regent of 
the kingdom, was not to be conceived. Madame de Ferriol was 
ambitious; the Marechal d'Uxelles was deserting her: might not 
Aisse prove the stepping-stone to a new and more dazzling fortune 
than the first ? She urged her to yield ; she combated her argu- 
ments ; she called her moral scruples folly; and exhorted her to do 
as all around her did. Aisse was young, inexperienced, and pliable 
by nature. The world in which she had spent her youth was so 
corrupt that her sense of moral right or wrong was never fully 
developed. She gradually confessed the truth of Madame de Fer- 
riol's reasoning; but, when her unworthy protectress thought herself 
assured of the wished -for triumph, another obstacle arose — the young 
girl declined to become the mistress of the regent : no longer on 
moral grounds, but on the plea that she did not, and could never 
love him. Unlike the noble and freeborn ladies of France, the 
Circassian slave, bought in the market of Constantinople, inexorably 
refused to sell herself for gold or power. This time, all the reasoning 



MADEMOISELLE AISSE. 69 

of Madame de Ferriol could not vanquish the resistance of Aisse\ 
When the persecution she endured at length became intolerable, the 
young girl threw herself at the feet of her protectress, conjuring her, 
in the name of Heaven, to cease mentioning this hateful subject; 
and declaring, with unexpected vehemence, that if it were urged 
again she would retire to a convent. Madame de Ferriol, alarmed 
at a threat which would have deprived her society of its greatest 
attraction, sullenly desisted from her project, but never forgave 
Mademoiselle Aisse this mortifying disappointment. 

At the house of Madame du Deffand, already known for her wit, 
beauty, and equivocal conduct, Aisse met a Knight of Malta, without 
either rank or wealth; but whose love she knew not how to resist, 
like that of the licentious Prince Regent. The Chevalier d'Aydie 
was young,- brave, and handsome : a true hero of romance ; with a 
disposition so loyal and so noble, that even the sceptical Voltaire 
called him, " le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche." The young 
knight no sooner beheld Mademoiselle Aisse than he became deeply 
enamoured. She returned his love : there existed only one obstacle 
to this deep and mutual passion. The parents of the Chevalier 
d'Aydie, who were as poor as they were noble, had early compelled 
him to enter the military order of the Knights of Saint John. He 
had, several years before their first meeting, taken the vows which 
bound him to lead a life of celibacy. It was then, in the struggle 
which conscience awhile maintained against passion, that all the 
fatal arguments of Madame de Ferriol recurred to the mind of Aisse. 
She yielded to their force; and her protectress, satisfied at the 
humiliation of a virtue which had been a silent reproach to her own 
misconduct, openly sanctioned, between her ward and the Chevalier 
d'Aydie, a connection which was only treated as a matter-of-course 
by the society in which they moved. Repentance and shame en- 
tered the soul of Aisse too late. With the connivance of Madame 
de Villette, who feigned to take her to England, while she left her 
in a retired quarter of Paris, she gave birth to a daughter, unsus- 
pected. Her child was afterwards placed in a provincial convent, 
where she passed under the name of Miss Black, niece of Lord 
Bolingbroke. But though appearances, which were still of para- 
mount importance in that corrupt world, were thus saved, the sense 
of shame and degradation never left Mademoiselle Aisse' s mind; 
naturally too pure and delicate for the errors into which her unhappy 
education had made her fall. 

The birth of their child only increased the passion of the Chevalier 
d'Aydie. He had already offered his mistress to procure a dispen- 
sation from the Pope, and marry her; but she had steadily refused: 
her unknown origin, the poverty of her lover, and the prejudices of 
the age, which would have rendered such an alliance degrading for 



70 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

him, made her persist in her refusal, even when she became a mo- 
ther. In the excess of his passion, the chevalier vainly entreated 
Aisse to fly with him to the solitude of some remote land, where 
they might live in peace and happiness : she firmly declined. At 
this distance of time it is difficult to understand and appreciate her 
scruples : they were probably strengthened by the destiny of the 
Count of Nogent ; who, having imprudently married the beautiful 
slave brought, like her, from Constantinople by M. de Ferriol, had, 
in consequence, been subjected to the most bitter insults. The 
dread of entailing- a similar fate on her lover made Mademoiselle 
Aisse disinterestedly sacrifice her own hopes of felicity to his honour. 
" However much happiness it might be for me to become his wife," 
she mournfully wrote to her friend Madame Calandrini, " I must 
love the chevalier for himself What would the world say, if he 
married an unknown dependant on the family of Ferriol ? I value 
his honour too highly, and I am too proud to let him commit this 
folly. Would the chevalier always think as he does now? He 
might repent ; and then, indeed, I should die of grief at the thought 
of having caused his unhappiness — at the thought, more bitter still, 
of being no longer loved." 

Madame Calandrini, whom she thus addressed, was a lady of much 
piety and virtue, residing in Geneva, and who had endeavoured to 
awaken Aisse to a sense of her error. She succeeded; for the young 
girl's soul was naturally pure and good. But the affection she had 
conceived for the chevalier was no transient love : the struggle be- 
tween passion and duty was long and full of bitterness. The ill- 
temper of Madame de Ferriol, to whose house she returned after the 
death of the old ambassador, added to Aisse's sorrow. No duty, no 
obedience, however entire, could please the woman whom, notwith- 
standing all her faults, Aisse considered as the benefactress of her 
youth. Stolen visits to the convent where her child was brought up, 
and the affection of the chevalier, would have consoled her, if she 
could have indulged in that affection without the sense of sin. 
Though oppressed with remorse, she strove against her feelings in 
vain. " Alas !" as she again wrote to Madame Calandrini, " I have 
not the courage of being courageous. Reason, your counsel, and 
Divine grace itself, are not so strong as my passion." And she in- 
geniously strove to justify that passion to her friend and to her own 
heart. " The chevalier loved her so tenderly, that it would be 
ingratitude not to return his love. Was she not bound to do so for 
the sake of their child?" 

Madame Calandrini pitied her friend, consoled her, but continued 
her exhortations. Aisse admitted their truth, but delayed the 
dreaded period which should place an eternal bar between her and 
the man she loved. " Perhaps," she sadly and humbly observed — 



MADEMOISELLE AISSE. 71 

hoping, when hope there was none — "God will, after all, have 
mercy on us. Alas ! I have hard struggles to go through. I have 
had them all my life. I reproach myself — Ah ! why were you not 
Madame cle Ferriol ? You would have taught me to love virtue. 
. . I knew you much too late. You alone developed my soul : it 
was destined to be virtuous." 

" I am always remembering," she observed, on another occasion, 
" the conversation we had in your room. I make efforts which kill 

me Happy are those whose virtue enables them to 

triumph over a similar weakness ! To break through the bonds of a 
most violent passion, of a most tender and justifiable friendship — 
such is my fate. It is terrible. Can death be worse ? and yet you 
wish me to do it. I will; but I doubt that I can survive it. I fear 
to return to Paris : I fear whatever brings me nearer to the chevalier, 
and I am unhappy to be far from him. I know not what I wish. 
Oh, why/' she despairingly adds — " why may not my passion be 
permitted ? why is it not innocent ?" 

When Mademoiselle Aisse wrote this, she had already been at- 
tached to the Chevalier d' Ay die for several years; but time, instead 
of weakening, had strengthened their affection. Its depth and sin- 
cerity rendered her struggle very bitter. Her health soon sank 
under the weight of her sorrow, which was increased by the despair 
the chevalier felt when he thought himself on the point of losing 
her. " Every one," she wrote, when she had partly recovered, 
" pitied him. Indeed, Madame, you would have wept as I did. He 
had a mortal fear lest I should die. His grief and sadness were so 
great that I had to console him, and to conceal my sufferings from 
him as much as I could. His eyes were always filled with tears. I 
did not dare to look at him Madame de Ferriol asked me one day 
if I had bewitched him ? I answered, the charm which I used was 
to love against my own will, and to render his life as happy as I 
could." 

It was the bond of an affection so true, so tender and so constant, 
which Aisse had now to sever. She accomplished her task mourn- 
fully, but without weakness. The Chevalier d'Aydie had been well 
aware of Madame Calandrini's efforts to reclaim his mistress. He 
never sought to oppose that lady's influence, but in the most touch- 
ing terms he besought Aisse not to deprive him of her love. He 
renewed his offer of marriage, which she again declined. The dread 
of alienating him for ever made her long delay her resolve ; but that 
fear at length yielded to conscience, and she accordingly announced 
to the Chevalier d'Aydie, that friendship must henceforth be the 
only feeling between them. Her sorrow was too evident, and he 
loved her too well to indulge in useless remonstrances or reproaches. 
He submitted to her decision, not without grief, but resignedly ; 



72 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

protesting that her affection, whatever name she might give it, would 
ever be his only source of happiness, and promising never to seek to 
influence her against the dictates of her conscience. He religiously 
kept his word ; and, though years of mingled sorrow and remorse 
had faded the numberless charms which had first enchanted him, his 
love for his Circassian mistress ever remained fervent and true. In 
the sincerity of that affection he made her the whimsical proposal 
that, when their years were such as to justify such a course, without 
giving rise to scandal, they should both reside under the same roof, 
and spend the end of their life together; thus realizing, in their old 
age, the unavailing dream and longing of their youth. Mademoi- 
selle Aisse smiled and wept as she heard him ; for she knew she 
would never live to see even that second dream fulfilled. 

She ardently desired to consecrate her penitence, by confessing 
her sins to a priest ; but Madame de Ferriol would not probably 
have sanctioned such a step, and Aisse was now too weak to go even 
to the neighbouring church. A plot to enable her to carry her de- 
sire into effect, was accordingly concerted between the chevalier, 
Madame du Deffand, and Madame de Parabere. The latter lady 
called on her friend, and took her in her carriage to the house of 
Madame du Deffand, where a clergyman had been brought by the 
Chevalier d'Aydie. This solemn reconciliation of her soul to G-od, 
gave Aisse a peace of mind she had never known till then. The 
weary strife was over, the bitter cup was quaffed, and she felt spi- 
ritually strengthened and purified by its wholesome bitterness. Her 
conscience was at rest ; the chevalier loved her still ; she might love 
him without feeling burdened by the sense of sin or shame. But 
this happiness — for happiness it would have been — came too late. 
The strength of life and youth had been spent in the long straggle 
against passion. Signs she could not mistake soon told Aisse that 
her life was drawing to a close. 

She had suffered too much not to feel resigned; but she scarcely 
dared to contemplate the chevalier's grief. As though he could by 
his gifts have hoped to win back the life of a being so beloved, he 
was constantly heaping presents on every one around her. But love 
availed not against death, and each day brought Aisse nearer to the 
term of her existence. A few days before her end, she thus ad- 
dressed Madame Calandrini, for the last time. " The life I have 
led has been very wretched. Have I ever had an instant's joy? 
I could never be with myself. I dreaded to think. Bemorse never 
abandoned me from the time that I opened my eyes to the extent of 
my errors. Why, then, should I dread the separation of my soul, 
since I feel convinced that God is all goodness, and that my real 
happiness shall date from the moment when I leave this miserable 
body?" 



MADEMOISELLE AISSE. 73 

After a long and painful illness, Mademoiselle Aisse died, on the 
13th of March 1733. She was buried in the vault which the family 
of Ferriol possessed, in the church of Saint Roch. Within the 
narrow circle where she had shed the charm of her gentle presence, 
her death was deeply felt; for, if others were admired, she was 
loved. Madame de Parabere, who had attended on her during her 
sickness with the devotedness of a sister, long mourned her loss; 
which was lamented even by the selfish Madame du Deffand. Sophie, 
her maid, inconsolable at the death of her gentle mistress, entered 
a convent. The sorrow of the Chevalier cV Aydie was the most bitter 
and lasting. Though he survived the woman he had loved, for 
many years, he never ceased to cherish her memory. He retired to 
the country, and devoted himself to the education of his daughter; 
whose dazzling beauty vividly recalled her mother, such as she was 
when he beheld her first at Madame du Deffand's — young, beautiful, 
and happy. 

"With Mademoiselle Aisse concludes the history of female influ- 
ence under the regency. Although she outlived the close of that 
period for several years, she belongs to it by her education and by 
her errors : but, though she was not so fortunate as to escape its im- 
morality, she, at least, never participated in its heartless corruption. 
She was one of the few women in upper society whom no faults of 
conduct could wholly divest from their native truth and purity. 
Her power was limited ; but within its sphere it was a severe, and — 
strange as it may seenr — a moral power. Her earnestness and 
honesty of feeling were recognised and respected. It was only the 
extreme weakness and frivolousness of Madarue cle Parabere which 
prevented her from being reclaimed by her friend. Her efforts to 
inspire her with the desire of a purer life were well known. On 
one occasion, when Madame de Parabere had discarded her lover, 
those who wished to succeed him in her favour, fearing lest Made- 
moiselle Aisse should take this opportunity to convert her friend, 
agreed to prevent them from meeting until the lady should have 
made a new choice. 

_The indulgence which Aisse displayed towards Madame de Para- 
bere did not extend to Madame de Tencin. Between these two 
women — one frail and erring, but still so candid and noble-minded; 
the other heartless, corrupt, and a profound dissembler — there always 
existed a strong feeliug of repulsion. Mademoiselle Aisse pitied 
Madame de Parabere, whilst she reproved her vices : the weakness 
of her character and intellect partly excused her; but there was 
something in the mixture of great talents and total want of principle, 
characteristic of Madame de Tencin, which was, and justly so, more 
repugnant to her moral sense than mere profligacy. Though she 
could not avoid mingling with those whose vices she condemned, 
7 



74 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

habit never mitigated Mademoiselle Aisse' s indignation against the 
corruption of the age : she expressed it all in her correspondence, 
with singular force and energy. On one occasion, when her pen 
refused to trace some new deed of infamy, she prophetically ex- 
claimed : " Everything that happens in this monarchy announces its 
coming destruction." 

Had her own example always sanctioned her principles, Made- 
moiselle Aisse might have possessed a power far more extensive and 
beneficial than that which she owned : and yet, so corrupt was the 
age, her scruples and sincere penitence were neither much admired 
nor understood. The deep sorrow she felt for the errors of her 
youth, only excited a feeling very akin to ridicule in the mind of 
Voltaire, when he read her correspondence many years after her 
death. That sorrow has purified and exalted her memory in the 
judgment of posterity. 

The part which the Circassian Aisse acted in the history of her 
times, is not, perhaps, very striking or important. But those whose 
task it is to dwell on the state of French society during the regency, 
will ever find it difficult to forbear introducing a figure so touching 
and so pure, amidst the shameless license which must form the sub- 
ject of their whole picture. 



PEEIOD THE SECOND. 

REICxX OF LOUIS XT. 



.CHAPTER I. 

Retrospective view of the regency. — The first Bureaux d'Esprit. — Madame 
de la Popeliniere. — Madame de Tencin. 

The regency can only be viewed as one of those transitory periods 
which seemed destined to mark, in history, the passage, otherwise 
too sudden and violent, from one epoch to another. 

If we consider the reign of Louis XIY. and that of his successor 
— a stern but still majestic tyranny on the one hand, and a weak, 
profligate despotism on the other — it is evident that the arbitrary 
power, once so strong and so respected, could not have fallen imme- 
diately, and without preparation, into the contempt and abhorrence 
which foretold its approaching ruin. Even as the human mind 
seldom passes at once from implicit belief to total scepticism, so that 
aggregate of human minds called a nation, requires an intervening- 
period before it wholly renounces the gods whom its fathers have 
worshipped. The sway of the regent acted as the necessary transi- 
tion between a respected though hollow power, and one which, whilst 
it proved more hollow still, was not entitled even to the shadow of 
respect. 

The secret corruption which undermined society during the long 
reign of Louis XIY., broke forth openly at the death of the aged 
monarch. The nation, on suddenly finding itself free, after years 
of gloomy restraint, plunged headlong into the most sensual excesses. 
None paused to examine what they should reject or admit ; license 
was the step which led from insincere devotion to professed scep- 
ticism. During the regent's sway, all faith in religious and political 
institutions seemed to perish; materialism in its grossest form 
became the prevailing feeling of the nation : a feeling which the 
succeeding philosophers partly adopted and partly purified, before 



76 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

openly making it the creed of France. It is this difference between 
the mere indistinct feeling and the fully defined creed, which draws 
so wide a distinction between the regency and the reign of Lonis 
XV. The corruption which was recklessly practised at one period, 
as a defiance against the memory of Louis XIV., was systematically 
adopted and justified during the following reign j and, by destroying 
the remaining vestiges of the middle ages, it tended to aid the cause 
of scepticism. It was thus that France passed from that austere, 
though decaying, faith which characterized the seventeenth century, 
to the corroding and licentious incredulity of the eighteenth. 

If we take this retrospective view of the regency, it is because 
that period was succeeded by a few years of repose and comparative 
decency, which might have led an unreflecting mind to conjecture 
that these previous saturnalia of a falling power could pass and 
leave no trace behind. The youth of the king, the purity of his 
early life, and the cautious moderation of the prime minister, Car- 
dinal Fleury, caused a temporary reaction calculated to favour this 
belief. It was, however, precisely during this period that philo- 
sophy acquired the power which was to prove so formidable. As 
yet, it was scarcely feared or understood : it only embodied the 
opinions of a few individuals ; it had not become the creed of the 
nation. 

The free development of philosophy was greatly favoured by the 
personal characters of Fleury and the young king; for both, though 
through different motives, forbore to interfere with the professors of 
the new doctrines. The ambitious vanity of Louis XI V., as well 
as his natural tastes, had led him, in the spirit of his contemporaries, 
to identify himself with almost every remarkable movement which 
took place. It was thus that he controlled literature by becoming 
its patron, and completely ruled French society. The indolent and 
apathetic Louis XV., on the contrary, gave up the political power 
to his ministers and mistresses, and abandoned to women and lite- 
rary men that social influence which an unerring instinct had in- 
duced his predecessor to secure. The name of Louis XIV. is con- 
nected with every event of his reign ; that of his descendant might 
almost be omitted in the history of the eighteenth eentury. In 
this indifference of Louis XV. to the personal exercise of power, 
originated a wide separation between the court and French society, 
unknown until his reign. 

Hitherto the monarch had been the great arbiter of public opinion. 
He might be influenced, but the influence was at least exercised 
in his name. The court ruled everything, from state matters to 
the success of a new play. What the court praised was inevitably 
admired in Paris. Such at least had been the case during the long 
reign of Louis XIV. The little heed Louis XV. took of anything not 



THE BUREAUX d'eSPRIT. 77 

concerning Lis pleasures, and the timid scruples of Fleurj — both 
so much opposed to the ardent and progressive spirit of the age — 
first created a feeling of independence in Parisian society. This 
feeling soon became one of antagonism, at first scarcely concealed 
and openly declared in the end. The court long affected to contemn 
the new power which had thus sprung up into existence, and vainly 
attempted to supersede it when it had, in time, become the organ 
of the age. The attempt was, from its nature, doomed to fail; and, 
after a brief struggle, Versailles bowed before the decrees of a 
world from which it had, until then, held aloof with contempt. 

It need scarcely be mentioned that this new power was under 
the sole and immediate control of women. Whilst men of talent 
were neglected by the court, the clever ladies of Parisian society 
received them in their saloons. It was the women who complied 
with the demands of the age, which neither Fleury nor Louis XV. 
understood. The cardinal feared and disliked light literature, which 
he considered of a dangerous tendency; the king was wholly indif- 
ferent to it. A few women seized on that important po,wer : they 
gave evening and dinner parties, and soon drew together the great 
men of the day. When it was found that they could raise men to 
reputation and to social power more securely than ministers or favour- 
ites, their court superseded that of royalty. Thus it was that women 
were among the first who paved the way to those great changes, in 
the religious and political state of the nation, which occurred to- 
wards the close of the century. 

During the earlier portion of Louis XV.'s reign, the philosophic 
power developed itself slowly, but not wholly unperceived. Already 
every literary production, history, play, tragedy, or romance, intro- 
duced those significant declamations against fanaticism and the 
priesthood, which, at a later period, were directed against religion 
itself. It was natural and inevitable, under an absolute govern- 
ment, that books should be rendered an organ of public opinion. 
Though the laws granted no institutions, literature was invested 
with all the force of one, by the general and tacit consent of society. 
Had Fleury been a man of daring and commanding mind, he might 
easily have conciliated the philosophic party, and softened, if not 
subdued, the vehemence of their attacks on religion. But, though 
aware of their dangerous influence, the cardinal would neither con- 
ciliate them by protection, nor irritate them by persecution. He 
never ventured beyond a timid repression, which they scarcely 
heeded. 

This medium course was that which the prudent and cautious 
priest adopted in governing France. By merely allowing the coun- 
try to recover in peace and quietness from the disasters inflicted by 
the ambition of Louis XIV., he effected much good. But even 

7* 



78 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

whilst lie made peace and economy the basis of his government, 
Cardinal Fleury was well aware of numberless evils, in which, 
though he felt his utter powerlessness to remove them, he partly 
foresaw the approaching ruin of the state. The accumulated mise- 
ries of centuries lay beyond his reach; they required no less than 
the vigorous and personal interference of the nation : in other words, 
a revolution. This Fleury felt; and, with the gloom natural to old 
age, he considered this dissolution of the existing order of things 
as the end of the world : the increasing spirit of irreligion confirmed 
him in this belief. With a strange infatuation, the cardinal, how- 1 
ever, persisted in his conduct towards that power of which he per- 
ceived the gradual and fatal advances. Without venturing on 
serious opposition, he rigidly refused to allow the philosophers any 
other influence than that social: one of which they were already 
possessed ; either undervaluing this influence, or feeling his own 
inability to repress it. When the young and libertine Abbe" de 
Bernis — la bouquetiere du Parnasse, as his frivolous talent for versi- 
fying had made him be called — asked the old cardinal for a living, 
Fleury peremptorily refused. "You shall never/' he observed, 
"obtain a living whilst I live." "I shall wait, then," was the 
prompt and audacious reply. And a few years later Cardinal Ber- 
nis governed France, with Madame de Pompadour. 

It has been observed, and with great truth, that the philosophers 
were treated too much like the young abbe. As long as the cardi- 
nal lived, they could do little outwardly; but, like the abbe, the 
whole body bided their time, inwardly exclaiming, "we shall wait;" 
and like him, too, when the old cardinal was in his grave, they 
governed France — as they had longed to govern her — by the power 
of ideas. 

Thus, favoured by the indifference of the monarch and the timidity 
of his ministers, philosophic literature developed itself freely. We 
have used the term "philosophic literature," because literature, 
which in France had been learned and religious during the sixteenth 
century, poetical and brilliant in the seventeenth, became almost 
exclusively philosophic in the eighteenth century. Never, indeed, 
was there an age less fitted for faith or poetry : the deep and wither- 
ing corruption of the regency seemed to have destroyed the very 
root of these faculties in man. To know and study himself — not, 
however, in an elevated point of view — became his greatest intel- 
lectual want. Abstract reasoning superseded feeling and imagina- 
tion : a cold, analytic tendency is remarkable in the earliest produc- 
tions of this period. But however heartless the action of intellect 
may have then been, it was full of life and energy. After the gross- 
ness and license of the regency, a reaction took place in the feelings 



MADAME DE LA POPELINIERE. 79 

of the nation, and there arose a universal wish for intellectual 
excitement. 

Two women, Madame de la Popeliniere and Madame de Tencin, 
represented the various aspects of this new feature in the tastes of 
the nation : Madame du Maine and the courtly beaux-esprits of 
Sceaux were already left far behind. Men of the world, who to 
their general licentiousness united a voluptuous taste for the fine 
arts, mingled with singers, musicians, painters, and poets, in the 
drawing-room of the graceful Madame de la Popeliniere. This 
lady, herself the daughter of an actress, and the wife of one of the 
wealthiest farmers-general of the day, was admirably adapted to 
connect the degenerate scions of a reckless nobility with the men 
who administered to their pleasures. She helped to found the loose 
and degraded school of art which had already superseded the stately 
magnificence introduced under Louis XI V., and which was after- 
wards brought to its highest point by the patronage of Madame de 
Pompadour. M. de la Popeliniere was one of those opulent finan- 
ciers whose intercourse and alliances with the nobility had enabled 
them to acquire all the external polish of the upper ranks of society. 
The growing importance of this class was a revolution in the man- 
ners of the nation, which foreboded one in the form of their govern- 
ment. M. de la Popeliniere's ostentatious patronage of artists had 
won for him the title of the French Maecenas. Kameau, the com- 
poser; Yaucanson, the mechanician; Yanloo, the painter; his lovely 
wife, who introduced Italian singing in France; Lany, the dancer, 
with poets, like the rosy Abbe de Bernis or the heavy Bernard (so 
inappropriately named "le gentil") represented art and poetry at 
the house of the rich financier. 

Madame de la Popeliniere was far superior to her husband. Her 
mother, Mademoiselle Daucour, had educated her for the stage, on 
which she would probably have figured with much applause, if M. 
de la Popeliniere, fascinated by her beauty and elegant wit, had not 
made her his mistress. Mademoiselle Daucour represented herself 
to Madame de Tencin as having been seduced by her lover ; and so 
interested her protectress in her behalf, that .she mentioned her case 
to the prime minister. The act of openly keeping a mistress was a 
luxury as yet scarcely authorized among the bourgeoisie : vice was 
still considered the privilege of the noble and the great. Fleury 
exacted that M. de la Popeliniere should marry Mademoiselle Dau- 
cour; threatening, in case of refusal, to withdraw the lease which 
he held from the king as farmer-general. M. de la Popeliniere 
complied ; but he never forgave his mistress the means she had 
taken to secure the rank of his wife. 

Madame de la Popeliniere soon became one of the most admired 
women of the Parisian world. She adapted herself to her new po- 



80 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

sition with singular ease and tact, and did the honours of her hus- 
band's house with the utmost grace and affability. Her wit and 
taste became celebrated; the latter quality was especially displayed 
in the judgments she passed on all the works of art or literature sub- 
mitted to her : she was soon thought infallible in such matters. An 
appeal against any of her decisions was, until J. B. Rousseau came, 
a thing almost unheard of. Marmontel, an excellent judge on these 
subjects, and by no means prejudiced in her favour, speaks of her 
talents as a critic with the highest praise. " Madame de la Popeli- 
niere," he observes, in his memoirs, "paid me some attention. She 
wished me to read Aristomene to her; and, of all the critics I had 
consulted, she was, in my opinion, the best. After hearing my 
tragedy, she analyzed it with singular clearness and precision; re- 
traced the course of the action, scene by scene; remarked the pas- 
sages which she had found beautiful, as well as those she thought 
feeble; whilst all the corrections she proposed struck me as so many 
rays of light. A perception so lively, so rapid, and yet so just, asto- 
nished the whole company; and, though at this reading I received 
abundant applause, I must say that her success eclipsed mine/' 

The successes of Madame de la Popeliniere were short-lived. She 
engaged, through mere vanity, in an intrigue with Richelieu, which 
her husband discovered. He made her a handsome allowance, but 
would no longer allow her to reside under his roof. Madame de la 
Popeliniere was thus excluded, forever, from that elegant society 
over which she had ruled with so much grace : for the Parisian world 
adopted the Spartan maxim of punishing, not those who sinned, but 
those who did not sin cleverly enough. A painful illness cut her 
off in the flower of her age : grief and ennui aggravated her suffer- 
ings : the Duke of Richelieu, however, paid her great attention until 
her death, and was lauded to the skies for this heroic constancy. 

Whilst Madame de la Popeliniere represented the artistic tenden- 
cies of society, the more strictly intellectual portion — the men of 
science and daring thought — gathered around Madame de Tencin; 
that Queen of beaux-esprits, as she was then called. After acting 
the part of a profligate intrigante under the regency, Madame de 
Tencin, under the ministry of Fleury, seemingly gave up her in- 
trigues, and was satisfied with keeping one of the earliest and most 
celebrated bureaux d'esprits of the eighteenth century. Fleury, who 
feared and disliked her, did not venture to oppose this branch of her 
power : he even submitted to her influence more than he imagined ; 
for, whilst he often yielded to the advice of his old friend, Madame 
de Carignan, this lady was wholly under the guidance of Madame 
de Tencin. Not satisfied with this influence, the ex-nun wished to 
govern through her brother. Her intrigues procured him the high- 
est dignities of the church, but failed in raising him to the rank of 



MADAME DE TENCItf. 81 

minister. This want of success in her most ardent wish made her 
give more time and attention than she might otherwise have granted 
to her literary society. We have already alluded to it in the pre- 
ceding pages, but its most brilliant epoch was certainly during the 
ministry of Fleury. This little coterie, more truly select and intel- 
lectual than any of those by which it was succeeded, has been de- 
scribed with much liveliness by Marmontel : " I there saw assembled, 
Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Mairan, Marivaux, the young Helvetius, 
Astruc, and others, all literary or scientific men; and in the midst 
of them, a woman of singular talents and profound judgment, but 
who, with her plain and simple exterior, had more the look of the 
housekeeper than of the mistress. This was Madame de Tencin. 
I soon perceived that each guest came there ready to 
act his part, and that the wish of shining often prevented conversa- 
tion from following an easy and natural course. Every one seemed 
anxious to seize, as quickly as possible, and as it flew by, the oppor- 
tune moment of uttering his bon-mot and his anecdote — of ushering 
his maxim or his trail of light and brilliant wit; and this necessary 
a. propos was often rather far-fetched. In Marivaux, the impatient 
wish of displaying his sagacity and finesse was visibly manifested. 
Montesquieu waited with more calmness until the ball should come 
to him, but he waited for it nevertheless; Mairan watched for the 
favourable opportunity; Astruc disdained to wait; Fontenelle alone 
let it come to him without seeking for it, and he made so discreet a 
use of the attention with which he was heard, that his ingenious re- 
marks and charming stories never occupied more than a moment ; 
Helvetius, attentive and discreet, listened and collected for the 
future." 

Such was, no doubt, the external aspect of Madame de Tencin' s 
society; but there was more in it than met the eye of so superficial 
an observer as Marmontel. Under the superintendence of a cold, 
worldly woman, the germ of the future Encyclopaedists was being 
slowly but surely developed. A mind so keen, so clear-sighted, so 
deeply versed in the details of political machinery, as was that of 
Madame de Tencin, could not but be annoyed and disgusted at the 
disorder of everything in the state. Disappointed ambition con- 
verted this feeling into one of secret but dangerous opposition. She 
found no difficulty in imparting her own sentiments of discontent 
to her friends. The actual circumstances of the country favoured 
the growth of such feelings ; nor was Madame de Tencin unfitted 
to receive the first outpourings of the covert indignation which the 
condition of France was then beginning to inspire. As she advanced 
in age her conduct naturally became more correct than it had been 
hitherto ; she could not command esteem, but her tact and address 
enabled her to secure the outward respect of those who approached 



82 WOMAN IN TRANCE. 

her : she asked no more. Those who esteemed her least could not 
be indifferent to her, and the attractions of her mind and conversa- 
tion procured her more admirers than she had formerly obtained by 
the charms of her person : she even numbered amongst her friends 
Pope Benedict XIV., who, as Cardinal Lanibertini, had frequented 
the literary circle at her house. When he was raised to the ponti- 
fical chair he sent her his portrait in token of remembrance, and 
carried on a close correspondence with her. The immorality of 
Madame de Tencin was, moreover, no disqualification for becoming 
the advocate of enlightened freedom. It was a characteristic feature 
of the eighteenth century, that all those who prepared the great but 
short-lived triumph of liberty with which it closed, participated, 
from Madame de Tencin down to Mirabeau, in the immorality of the 
age. Freedom sprang not, as in Rome or in early Greece, from a 
primitive purity of morals, but from the very corruption of pre- 
ceding tyranny. It was an intellectual movement, and all joined in 
it ; not so much for the reason that the existing; state of things was 
corrupt or impure, as because all felt that it was worn out, and 
doomed to perish. This was especially the case with the early phi- 
losophers; the school of Rousseau adopted a more exalted and sen- 
timental tone : all had the same end in view— destruction. 

Madame de Tencin was one of the first women who laid the basis 
of this formidable power. The nature of her influence over her 
contemporaries may be traced in two important works, which, if they 
do not owe their existence to her, were at least inspired by the tone 
prevailing in her circle. We allude to Montesquieu's " Esprit des 
Lois/' to the success of which Madame de Tencin greatly contribu- 
ted, and to Helvetius's " De l'Esprit;" not published, indeed, until 
after her death, but imbued with the doctrines which both she and 
her friends professed. Thus the first attack on absolute monarchy 
in favour of constitutional freedom, and the first display of that 
gross materialism which characterized the eighteenth century, both 
originated in the drawing-room of Madame de Tencin. 

In the present altered state of society, it may appear strange to 
see a clever and unprincipled woman acting so important a part- 
But we have already shown that the absence of political rights ren- 
dered this interference of woman unavoidable. Madame de Tencin 
was well aware of the power of her sex. Her advice to Marmontel 
on his conduct in the world, was, above all things, to secure the 
friendship of women. It is, indeed, certain that without their aid 
nothing could have been done in France for freedom. A strong 
proof of this is afforded by the fate of a political and literary club, 
known as the club de l'Entresol, which was founded in Paris in the 
year 1724. Bolingbroke, then an exile in France, induced a few of 
his friends, at the head of whom was l'Abbe Alary, to form a so- 



THE CLUB DE i/eNTKESOL. 83 

ciety, and meet occasionally in order to discuss the political ques- 
tions of the day. They met in the entresol of President Henault's 
hotel, whence they derived their name. As they were personally 
acquainted with one another, they had no fear of being betrayed. 
All the abuses in the State, and every interesting political question 
of the moment, were noticed by them, and duly commented upon. 
The philanthropic but visionary Abbe de Saint-Pierre, here read 
his projects for perpetual peace, and discussed how dukes and peers 
might be rendered useful to the state : a difficult question to solve. 
Many high and eminent men joined the meetings of this society. 
The nobles were far from being averse to the constitutional system 
of England, which, whilst it secured the liberty of the poorer 
classes, granted preponderating power and influence to the aristo- 
cracy by whom it had been established. 

Fleury saw a germ of opposition in the existence of this political 
club, and, after tolerating it for several years, he caused it to be 
quietly suppressed. It was useless for the members to resist : no 
law secured the right of meeting in order to criticise the acts of 
government; and, as they were neither thrown into the bastille, 
nor otherwise persecuted, they had, according to the existing state 
of things, little reason to complain. They had failed, moreover, in 
enlisting the women in their cause : many of Bolingbroke's disciples 
affected to despise what they called drawing-room reputations; and, 
seduced by the brilliant and versatile talents of the English noble- 
man, aimed at becoming, like him, statesmen and orators. They 
forget that, if they were ready with their parts, the stage was still 
wanting. 

The women took the greatest vengeance in their power of this 
encroachment on their privileges : they never spoke of the club de 
FEntresol whilst it existed, and they raised no voice in its favour 
when it was dissolved. The result of this was, that the suppression 
was scarcely heeded, and was immediately forgotten. Would Fleury, 
would any other minister, have dared to control the soirees of Ma- 
dame de la Popeliniere or of Madame de Tencin ? far more de- 
structive, however, and dangerous to the state than the pacific and 
social theories of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre ; for, if they did not 
outstrip him in their views, they avoided clothing them in the ridi- 
culous form which caused the good abbe to be both contemned and 
tolerated. Everything that sprang from these assemblies was clear 
and tangible ; there was an end in view, and the strides made to- 
wards that end were both straightforward and swift. The members 
of the club de l'Entresol were dispersed as soon as they ventured to 
express their opinions beyond their own narrow circle. Under the 
presidency of a fashionable woman they might have spoken fear- 
lessly. It was this that constituted the great social influence of 



84 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

woman. Every day this power acquired a greater impetus; for 
every one began to see that, in order to be celebrated and admired, 
it was not needful to be either presented at Versailles or patronized 
by a minister. A few words of elegant praise from Madame de la 
Popeliniere, a quiet remark of Madame de Tencin, were enough to 
insure this result in the higher classes. Around these fair plants 
moved innumerable stars which received their light from them, and 
diffused it in their turn to the inferior circles over which they pre- 
sided. Thus the same spirit was spread throughout the whole of 
society. 

And whilst matters were going on thus, whilst women and literary 
men were wielding that formidable power called opinion — and which, 
let governments change as they will, still rules the world — what did 
the court, the ministers, or the king, do, if not to win it over, at 
least to control it? The answer is the history of France at that 
period — they did nothing ! 



CHAPTER II. 



The Court. — Louis XV. — His mistresses. — Madame de Mailly. — Madame de 
Vintimille. — Madame de- Chateauroux. 

Whilst Madame de la Popeliniere and Madame de Tencin re- 
present and govern the elite of French society, types of the corrup- 
tion of the nobility, of the folly and insolence of princely rank, and 
of the weakness of falling monarchy, may be found in the Duke of 
Eichelieu, the Count of Charolais, and the young and indolent 
Louis XV. 

The versatile Richelieu, formerly Duke of Fronsac, is eminently 
fitted to stand forth as the grand seigneur of the eighteenth century : 
brave, handsome, profligate, and witty, the darling pet of the austere 
Madame de Maintenon, the favourite of all the handsome women of 
his time, from the royal princess down to the grisette, he distin- 
guished himself through three generations, by gallantries, diplomatic 
intrigues, and occasional successes in war. Profligate even in his 
old age, he died on the eve of the great convulsions of French so- 
ciety : reckless of the past, indifferent to the future, and bequeathing 
the aristocratic corruption he had fomented to the fierce vengeance 
of the French revolution. 

The aristocracy were, under Fleury, what they had been under 
the regency of the Duke of Orleans, reckless and corrupt. They 



THE COURT. 85 

still kept aloof from the literary circles, but began to receive and 
visit the financiers ; whose daughters brought wealth and mes-alli- 
ance into more than one ancient house. With the exception of the 
few nobles who frequented Madame de la Popeliniere's circle, the 
great majority were indifferent to the arts which they vainly affected 
to patronize. The Marechal d'Estrees, who possessed one of the 
finest collections of antiques in France, never knew the value of the 
treasures he spent vast sums to accumulate. Having once heard 
that a bust of Alexander, said to be by Praxiteles, had been bought 
at a sale a few years before, by an unknown Parisian amateur, he 
commissioned one of his agents to discover and purchase it, if possi- 
ble. After long researches, the bust was found in his own gallery, 
where it lay forgotten and covered with dust. Such was the en- 
lightened patronage extended towards the arts by the French no- 
bility. 

This haughty indifference to elegant pursuits was not redeemed 
by the rigid virtues with which it has been sometimes accompanied. 
The nobles, who disdained to lower themselves to the level of poets 
and artists, yet turned their old ancestral mansions into gambling- 
houses. The young Horace Walpole thus alludes to the subject, in 
one of the letters written during his first continental tour. " It is 
no dishonour to keep public gaming-houses: there are at least a 
hundred and fifty people of the first quality in Paris who live by it. 
You may go into their houses at all hours of the night, and find 
hazard, Pharoah, &c. The men who keep the hazard table at the 
Duke de G-esvres', pay him twelve guineas each night for the privi- 
lege. Even the princesses of the blood are dirty enough to have 
shares in the banks kept at their houses. We have seen two or 
three of them ; but they are not young, nor remarkable, but for 
wearing their red of a deeper dye than other women : though all 
use it extravagantly." The prejudices of the middle ages remained, 
but the deep sense of chivalrous honour belonging to those times 
had wholly vanished. 

To all the vices of the nobility, the princes of the blood added a 
singular amount of folly, insolence, and cruelty. The Duke of 
Orleans, son of the regent, a learned and austere Jansenist, distin- 
guished himself by extraordinary whims. It was his settled belief 
that the laws of nature had become suspended, and that neither 
births nor deaths any longer occurred. Until the birth of the 
Dauphin, this learned madman was the heir-presumptive to the 
throne. The insanity of the degenerated Condes took a more dan- 
gerous form. The most harmless of them was subject to fits, during 
which he barked like a dog ; the princes of Conti became notorious 
for their revolting and atrocious actions : the Count of Charolais 
amused himself with shooting down tilers from the roofs of the 



86 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

houses ; for the consequences of which princely amusement, he was 
three times pardoned by the king. 

Mingled fear and hatred was the only feeling the people enter- 
tained for the nobles and the princes; but the faith in royalty still 
lived, strong, and deep, in their hearts. Before the revolution of 
1789, the attachment of the French for their sovereigns was pro- 
verbial : nor was it unfounded. Ever since Louis VI., the monarchs 
of France had endeavoured to raise the condition of the commons, 
and to lower the pride of the nobility. The people naturally felt 
grateful to the king, who thus delivered them from the oppression 
of their local tyrants. He soon became in their eyes the source of 
all law and all justice; it was this that invested him with a sacred 
character. As long as the nobles had the greatest share of power, 
no doubt was thrown on the infallibility of royalty; but when the 
nobles were completely subdued— when the monarch and his people 
stood face to face — then the latter, all their illusions being dispelled, 
broke the idol they had worshipped so long. The absolute power 
of royalty thus led to its fall. 

The affection of the French for their monarchs survived, however, 
the good they had derived from them. Oppressed and degraded as 
the people were in the early part of the eighteenth century, they 
still idolized their young sovereign. The lonely and unprotected 
state of the descendant of so many kings, the dangers to which he 
was thought to be exposed, his beauty, and tender years, all con- 
tributed to render him dear to the nation. It was fondly believed 
that as soon as the king should have begun to govern for himself, 
every evil would be remedied. This hope was evidently exagge- 
rated : no monarch could have accomplished a task so mighty ; but 
there is no doubt that Louis XV., had he been sufficiently earnest or 
energetic, might have effected much. He might have consolidated 
royal authority, instead of leaving it weakened and decayed; he 
might have bettered the condition of the people, and not have driven 
them to desperation ; by doing nothing, by allowing matters to take 
their course, he entailed numberless evils on France and on his own 
posterity. 

It was the greatest misfortune of Louis XV. to have been badly 
educated. The opposite and pernicious influences of his preceptor 
Fleury and his governor Villeroi, may be traced in every error of 
his life. Fleury, either actuated by personal ambition, or fearing 
the effects of the rashness natural to a young and inexperienced 
monarch, instead of teaching his pupil how to command for the 
good of the people, only taught him to obey. This mistaken policy, 
joined to the apathetic temper of the young king, rendered him, at 
a later period, the slave of his ministers and mistresses. The Duke 
of Villeroi, on the other hand, impressed his pupil with the most 



LOUIS XV. 87 

exaggerated ideas of royal authority. Whenever on festive days 
crowds gathered in the garden of Versailles, Villeroi led the king to 
the balcony, and exclaimed, — "Look at them, sire! all this people 
belongs to you/ ; A fatal lesson, which was not lost on the future 
owner of the Pare aux Cerfs. It was by such teaching that Louis 
XV. grew up into that most despicable of kingly characters, — a weak 
tyrant. Convinced of the sacred nature of his power, he recklessly 
yielded it up to every unprincipled courtezan who pleased his fancy ; 
he thus became doubly guilty, since, whilst he betrayed the people 
he was bound to govern and protect, he also degraded that principle 
of the divine right of kings, in the belief of which he had been 
brought up. 

It was long, however, ere the errors of Louis XV. could make 
him forfeit the love of the people. Whenever he appeared in pub- 
lic, the grace and youthful majesty of his person, his mild and 
handsome Bourbon countenance, and those deep blue eyes, of a hue 
held to be unrivalled, excited universal admiration and sympathy. 
But even then, those whose glance went deeper than mere externals, 
saw serious causes of apprehension in the temper of the young kingj 
aud many could trace the future selfish voluptuary in the cold irony 
which already marred the sweetness of his smile. 

The natural temper of Louis XY. was, nevertheless, amiable : 
the selfishness he displayed was more the result of his position than 
that of his nature. He was incapable, however, of a deep feeling 
of attachment, and only loved through habit, which was all power- 
ful over him. He never made but a petty use of his power : even 
in his youth he was not averse to the satisfaction of mortifying a 
presumptuous courtier, or of keeping him in suspense concerning 
his real intentions. Though too indolent and apathetic to be vin- 
dictive, a feeling which implies energy, he never forgave or forgot 
an injury. His mind was superior to his character : no courtier 
surpassed him in keen, caustic wit or happy repartee : his judgment 
was clear, sound, and penetrating ; the opinions he emitted on state 
affairs often struck his ministers as so many rays of light. But it 
was seldom that Louis XY. cared to have an opinion on any matter 
unconnected with his pleasures ; more seldom still that he persisted 
in following his own judgment : he went through the business of 
the state with evident indifference aud ennui. An education that 
fostered such feelings led directly to sensuality, and, though nothing 
could be further from Fleury's intention than this sad result, it was 
the only one his ill-directed teaching could reap. Before becoming 
renowned for his licentiousness, Louis XY. was already remarkable 
for <joicrmandi.se, and the presence of a new cook in the royal 
kitchen was an event of sufficient importance to be mentioned in the 
king's letters to his friends. Too weak for ardent religious feelings, 



88 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

he gave his whole attention to superstitious observances and a per- 
fect knowledge of the rubric ; congratulating himself whenever he 
could find a courtly bishop in fault. 

The young king found no resources against ennui in literature. 
Fleury disliked and distrusted the productions of his own times, 
and inspired his pupil with the same feeling. Louis XV. always 
showed a decided aversion to the bel esprit which characterized the 
period : he shunned the society of the brilliant Madame du Maine, 
whilst he courted that of her amiable and unassuming sister-in-law, 
Madame de Toulouse. Thus leading a life of indolence and sen- 
suality, Louis XV. could not always find in hunting, or in a puerile 
devotion, a sufficient source of pleasure \ he accordingly indulged 
in the most effeminate amusements. At one time the whole court 
was thrown into great commotion by a sudden fancy which the 
king took for worsted work. A courier was instantly despatched to 
Paris, for wool, needles, and canvass ; he only took two hours and 
a half to go and come back, and the same day all the courtiers in 
Versailles were seen, with the Duke of Gesyres at their head, em- 
broidering, like the sovereign. But even tapisserie was ineffectual 
to allay those periodical attacks of despondency to which Louis was 
subject from his youth; and during which his only pleasure was to 
entertain those around him with long and dismal accounts of grave- 
yards, sudden death, and all the melancholy pageantry of stately 
funeral processions. 

The great care which Fleury had taken to preserve him from the 
contamination of his court, long rendered the young king indifferent 
to any woman but his wife, the good but unattractive Marie Lecsin- 
ska. When the nobles pointedly drew his attention to the beauty 
of a court lady, Louis coldly asked if they thought her handsomer 
than the queen ? Had Marie Lecsinska been a woman of tact and 
talent, she would have found it an easy task to govern her husband; 
but, instead of conciliating him, she unfortunately alienated his affec- 
tion by her injudicious caprices. Wearied of his wife's society, 
Louis XV. began to indulge in those private suppers, in the com- 
pany of a few favourite courtiers, which afterwards became so cele- 
brated. It was at one of those suppers that the king first noticed 
Madame de Mailly, one of the plainest women of his court, but who 
pleased him by her mirth and good temper. He made her his mis- 
tress, in a fit of pique against the queen. But, as he then feared 
scandal as much as he afterwards braved it, this intrigue was carried 
on with great secrecy. 

Madame de Mailly was the eldest of five sisters, all fascinating in 
various respects, and who were destined to act a conspicuous part in 
the life of Louis XV. : four by their profligacy and one by her virtue. 
During her connection with the king, Madame de Mailly evinced a 



louis xv. 89 

rare and remarkable disinterestedness. She was sincerely attached 
to Louis XV., and refused to meddle in political intrigues; for which 
the simplicity of her character rendered her wholly unfit. Those 
who had calculated on her easy temper as a means of rising into 
power — and Madame de Tencin was amongst them — were griev- 
ously disappointed in their ambitious schemes. 

At the time of Madame de Mailly' s favour at court, Mademoiselle 
de Nesle, one of her unmarried sisters, was residing in the abbey of 
Port-Royal. Ugly, but unprincipled and full of talent and energy, 
she formed the bold project of superseding her sister in the king's 
affections; and, by ruling over the facile Louis XV., of governing 
France, and ultimately all Europe. She immediately wrote to Ma- 
dame de Mailly, expressing so ardent a desire of seeing the court, 
that her sister invited her to come and spend some time with her at 
Versailles. Notwithstanding her coarse and ungraceful person, and 
her total want of beauty, Mademoiselle de Nesle found no difficulty 
in fascinating Louis XV.: her brilliant and audacious wit, singular 
versatility of talent, and that inexhaustible power of yielding amuse- 
ment — so invaluable to an indolent monarch — blinded him to the 
imperfections of her person. The unhappy Madame de Mailly saw her- 
self wholly neglected for a rival — and that rival was her sister. The 
scandal was great. Fleury vainly opposed the king's new mistress : 
her power already balanced his; and she had, moreover, the art of 
never allowing its weight to be felt by her royal lover. She held, 
however, like Lauzun, the maxim, that the timid Bourbons required 
to be sternly ruled. Mademoiselle de Nesle had not long been at 
court when she married M. de Vintimelle, who basely agreed to this 
nominal and degrading alliance. Her power was already acquiring 
formidable proportions, and she seemed on the eve of realizing her 
ambitious plans, when death cut her off in the prime of life. The 
calumnies of the courtiers attributed her end to poison, administered 
through the agency of Fleury; but, much as he disliked the royal 
mistress, the pacific cardinal was incapable of this criminal action. 

The king, much affected by the death of his mistress, was seized 
with a sudden fit of remorse and devotion. His only comfort was 
in the society of the kind-hearted Madame de Mailly, with whom 
he deplored the loss of the deceased. His grief was, however, of 
brief duration : Madame de la Tournelle, another sister of Madame 
de Mailly, and far more handsome than either she or Madame de 
Vintimelle, whom she equalled in ambition, undertook to efface the 
memory of her sister from the heart of the king. She fully suc- 
ceeded, and was soon acknowledged as the royal mistress. Hence- 
forth, she became the centre of all the intrigues for power and 
mfluencc carried on at court. When she went with the king to 
Choisy, and was thus declared the favoured sultana, a numerous 

8* 



90 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

suite of nobles and court ladies followed in her train. The Duke 
and Duchess of Luynes alone refused this disgraceful honour ; for 
which act of independence and dignity they were never forgiven by 
the king. One of Madame de la Tournelle's first steps was to exact 
that Madame de Mailly should leave the court. Her unhappy 
sister, who still idolized the king, vainly begged of him not to 
banish her from his presence : he insisted that the request of Ma- 
dame de la Tournelle should be complied with ; the weeping and 
unpitied Madame de Mailly accordingly left Versailles for ever. 
She retired to Paris, and, like another Mademoiselle de la Valliere, 
devoted herself to the service of G-od. Without entering a convent, 
she led a life of such sincere penance and mortification, that even 
the most rigidly virtuous were compelled to admire her. The once- 
beloved mistress of a king — the sharer of those voluptuous banquets 
where he forgot his most sacred duties — now deprived herself of 
the common necessaries of life in order to relieve the poor. The 
abodes of want and misery henceforth became her home. She 
accepted every privation as a feeble atonement for her sinsj and 
when insults followed her, even in the house of prayer, she acknow- 
ledged them to be deserved, with touching and submissive humility. 
A man of the people once addressed her, in the church of Saint- 
Hoch, with a coarse epithet. "Since you know me so well," said 
she, calmly turning round towards him, " pray for me !" 

Madame de la Tournelle, who soon became Duchess of Chateau- 
roux, displayed a character of much ambition and energy. Her 
sense of virtue was still sufficiently strong for her to feel humbled 
by the splendid degradation she had sought and won; but, though 
she had not sufficient principle to recede from the path she had taken, 
she resolved, as an atonement, to rouse the monarch from his dis- 
graceful lethargy. The hopes which the nation had founded on 
their young king were- already yielding to the conviction that his 
indolence would never allow him to fulfil the duties of his high station. 
This was fully evident to those persons who moved in the higher 
circles. Madame de Tencin was amongst those who rightly judged 
that the monarch's apathy might ultimately prove fatal to France. 
" What happens in his kingdom," she observes of Louis XV., in 
her confidential letters to Richelieu, " seems to be no business of 
his. ... It is even said that he avoids taking any cognizance 
of what occurs, averring that it is better to know nothing than to 
learn unpleasant tidings. This is a fine sang froid; but though I 
am less concerned in this than he is, I shall never equal it." " The 
people," she remarks further on, with a depth and truth that might 
have warned Louis XV., the bien-aime, of the fate of monarchy, 
" only love their kings through habit." The following pithy pro- 
phecy may be quoted as a proof of her political sagacity and foresight : 



MADAME DE CHATEAUROUX. 91 

" Unless G-od visibly interferes, it is physically impossible that the 
State should not fall to pieces." No miracle was made in favour of 
those who recklessly rushed on to ruin : half a century later the de- 
scendant of Louis XV. expiated on the scaffold the culpable indo- 
lence of his predecessor. It was, perhaps, disappointed ambition 
that induced Madame de Tencin to express herself so bitterly. Both 
she and her brother, as well as the Duke of Richelieu, were amongst 
those who showed most anxiety to turn to their own advantage 
the growing power of Madame de Chateauroux. On the death of 
Fleury, Madame de Tencin spared no insinuating flattery in order to 
induce Madame de Chateauroux to use her influence in favour of her 
brother. " A clever woman," she writes to Richelieu, " knows how 
to unite pleasure and general interest. Without wearying her lover, 
she can make him do what she likes. My brother could consult with 
her on this subject" (a cardinal of the church and a royal mistress!), 
" and I have enough vanity to think I could become one of the prin- 
cipal springs of the great machinery it is her intention to set in 
motion." Had this plan succeeded — Madame de Chateauroux 
governing the king, and the cardinal being in his turn governed by 
his sister — Madame de Tencin would have become the great arbiter 
of every important question in France. Without meaning to assert 
that this unprincipled woman could or would have done much for 
the good of the country, it is evident that her double connection 
with the government and the philosophic party, might have tended 
to heal up the breach already existing between them both. But 
Madame de Chateauroux had not acquired her power in order to 
yield it up to another woman, and especially to so clever and in- 
triguing a woman as Madame de Tencin. She was, moreover, sur- 
rounded by friends who. gave her lessons in politics, in order that 
she might be fully qualified for her post j and by whose advice she 
confirmed the king in his dislike for the cardinal, and gave every 
important office to her own creatures. Madame de Chateauroux was, 
nevertheless, deeply convinced, like Madame de Tencin, of the ne- 
cessity of some radical change in the government. Of the confusion 
by which it was characterized, she spoke thus to a friend : " I could 
not have believed all that I now see; if no remedy is administered 
to. this state of things, there will, sooner or later, be a great boule- 
versement." 

Though the aim of Madame de Chateauroux was good, the means 
she took to effect it were not equally praiseworthy. Reckless of the 
real interests of the country, and desiring ardently to be the mistress 
of a great and admired monarch, she partly precipitated France into 
a fatal war, destined to humble Austria, and raise the unhappy 
Charles VII. to the throne of that empire. Like another Agnes 
Sorel she urged the king to take the command of his army, and re- 



92 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

solved to accompany him. This Louis forbade; but Madame de 
Chateauroux, taking the advice of Richelieu, her relative and most 
devoted courtier, privately followed Louis XY. in spite of his pro.- 
hibition : she was accompanied by her sister, Madame de Lauragais, 
who shared with her the king's favour. Two princesses of the blood, 
the Duchess of Modena, formerly Mademoiselle de Valois, and the 
Princess of Conti, unblushingly followed in the train of the royal 
favourites. 

The king had been received with enthusiasm by the army and the 
provinces; but when his mistress appeared everywhere with him 7 
this feeling was changed to one of deep indignation at the unblush- 
ing effrontery of royal profligacy. The king's sudden and dangerous 
illness at Metz tended to increase this feeling. Two parties were 
now formed around the sick-bed of the monarch. The religious 
party, attached to the devout Marie Lecsinska, asserted that his 
most Christian Majesty and eldest son of the church could not die 
without receiving the last sacraments ; the condition on which they 
would be administered to him being the public dismissal of his para- 
mour. The other party, that of Madame de Chateauroux, contended 
that the king was not beyond hope, and strained every nerve to keep 
him in this belief. Divided between his love for Madame de Cha- 
teauroux, and his terrors of eternal punishment, Louis XY. knew 
not how to act. Religious dread at length prevailed : for a servile 
fear, and not sincere penitence was the only feeling his weak mind 
could know. The king ended by yielding to the advice of his con- 
fessor : he publicly begged the queen's pardon, expressed his sorrow 
for the evil example he had set to his subjects, and ordered Madame 
de Chateauroux and her sister to be dismissed. This was done by 
her enemies, with every mark of contempt. The two women, sud- 
denly deserted by the courtiers, left the house where the king was 
lying ill, amidst the hootings of the populace; from whose fury 
they had to be protected during the whole of their journey to Paris. 

The king had scarcely made this sacrifice, to his fears of eternity 
when he recovered. The joy of the whole nation was so deep and 
real, that the monarch justly received the title of bien-aime. The 
churches, which during his illness had been filled to overflowing 
with worshippers petitioning Heaven in his behalf, now resounded 
with joyful Te Dennis. This feeling of gladness was greatly in- 
creased by a universal belief in the sincerity of the king's repent- 
ance. The poissardes of the Halle observed, in their own significant 
and impressive language, that if the king took back his mistress he 
might die without getting so much as a, pater or an ave from them. 
This was the greatest threat of the women who exulted over the 
fate of Louis XYL, and followed Marie- Antoinette to the scaffold. 

When the king was fully recovered, and had returned to Yer- 



MADAME DE CHATEAUROUX. 93 

sailles, he fell into a fit of melancholy abstraction, of which the 
courtiers easily suspected the motive. The repentance of Louis 
XV. had never been heartfelt : it sprang from terror j and now that 
the death he had feared seemed once more distant, he felt both mor- 
tified at the humiliating part he had acted, and grieved at the loss 
of Madame de Chateauroux. Unable, or rather unwilling to resist 
the pleadings of his love, he privately sought his injured and 
now neglected mistress. The result of this interview was soon 
known; for in a few days Maurepas, the mortal enemy of the 
duchess, called upon her, and, in the presence of a numerous assem- 
bly, humbly requested her in the name of the king to forgive the 
injurious manner in which she had been treated during his majesty's 
illness, as well as to return to his court. Madame de Chateauroux, 
who was then slightly indisposed, answered, that as soon she was 
recovered she should be happy to obey the king's commands. This 
mortification had been inflicted, at her request, on Maurepas, as the 
first of those steps of retaliation, in which her haughty temper al- 
ready meant to indulge on her return to court. But to that station, 
which she had purchased at the cost of peace and honour, she was 
never destined to return: her illness soon assumed an alarming 
character, and ere long the doctors declared her case hopeless. In 
a few days after the visit of Maurepas she died, in the arms of the 
forgiving Madame de Mailly, and with promises of future penance 
on her lips; to verify which, life was not granted to her. 

The death of his mistress overwhelmed the king with despair : it 
is said she was the only woman he ever really and sincerely loved. 
During her brief illness he showed the greatest grief, and caused 
prayers to be offered up everywhere for her recovery. The death 
of Madame de Chateauroux was, like that of her sister, attributed 
to poison ; but the only proof of this assertion was the fear her return 
to court excited in the minds of those who had imprudently declared 
themselves her enemies at Metz. Madame de Chateauroux was 
buried with great privacy in the church of Saint-Sulpice. An armed 
escort accompanied her cofim to the grave, lest the hatred of the 
populace should vent itself on her senseless remains. 

This hatred was scarcely justified. Without seeking to palliate 
her errors, it may be asserted that Madame de Chateauroux was in- 
finitely superior to the women by whom she was succeeded. She 
did not, like them, make an open traffic of her power : on being 
once offered a large sum, in order to favour an individual at court, 
she refused with indignation and contempt. Her sense of the de- 
gradation of her position was never entirely obliterated. The dig- 
nified gentleness of the injured queen always affected her painfully : 
she confessed herself humbled in her presence. The pure and suf- 
fering Marie Lecsinska could have asked for no greater vengeance 



94 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

to fall on the haughty Madame de Chateauroux, than this feeling of 
humiliation and shame. It would also be unjust to deny Madame 
de Chateauroux the merit of haying sought to rouse Louis XV. 
from the state of apathetic indolence into which he had fallen. The 
means she took were injudicious, and led to new misfortunes; but 
her aim was noble. Experience might have taught her a better use 
of her power. Had that power lasted, as there is little doubt that 
it would, if her life had been prolonged, Louis XV. might have 
been another man. 

The people, however, hated Madame de Chateauroux, without re- 
gard to the good or evil she might effect, because she seemed to 
them the personification of royal profligacy in its worst form. It 
was a fact beyond dispute that she had succeeded her two eldest 
sisters in the favour of the king, and it was generally believed that 
she had shared that favour with her sister, Madame de Lauragais. 
A corrupted court might look with indifference on such things : nor 
was royal profligacy treated with much severity in the philosophic 
circles ; but in the mass of the nation, where the sense of morality 
and decency still survived, such facts, linked with the sovereign's 
name, only excited abhorrence and disgust. It did not tend to 
soften this feeling that, whilst the king forgot his duties and every 
honourable thought in guilty indulgences, the state of the country 
daily became worse. The unhappy and oppressed peasantry were 
the principal sufferers. The nobles themselves began to be alarmed 
at the consequences of so much misery. In the year 1739, fifty 
years before the French Revolution, whilst the country was in a 
state of peace, and the crops were of average abundance, men, ac- 
cording to the testimony of a contemporary minister, died by thou- 
sands, after vainly endeavouring to appease with grass the cravings 
of hunger. When the king was once holding his council, his rela- 
tive the Duke of Orleans placed on the table before him a piece of 
bread made of heath, uttering the ominous words : — " Sire, this is 
the food of your subjects." The general misery spread even to the 
neighbourhood of Versailles, and still more unwelcome intimations 
of the truth than those which come from his counsellors, met the 
king's ears. When he traversed the suburbs of Paris, whilst going 
to his pleasure seats, the people no longer cried out Vive le Eoi ! 
but " famine" and " bread \" Once, as he was hunting in the forest 
of Senart, he met a peasant on horseback, carrying a coffin before 
him. " For whom is that coffin ?" asked the king, stopping. " For 
a man of — —." " Of what did he die ?" " Of hunger," abruptly 
said the peasant, looking at him fixedly as he spoke. The king 
asked no more questions, but spurred his horse and rode on. 

Was there nothing in this reply of a subject to his sovereign? 
No warning of a lowering future ? Nothing beyond the mere inti- 



POWER OP INTELLECT. 95 

mation, that a man had died of hunger ; within a few steps, per- 
haps, of the Royal Versailles, that seat of corrupt luxury ? If there 
was anything more, Louis XV. heeded it not : casting the burden of 
his sins on his innocent descendant, leaving him to expiate the accu- 
mulated evils of ages, he strove to forget what he had heard, and 
sought not to learn more. 

It is not without deep reluctance that we have paused in our task, 
in order to place before our readers these pictures of royal profligacy; 
but they were necessary to the understanding of what has preceded, 
as well as to the full comprehension of what is to follow. Will it 
be wondered at that such a court should have little power ? That, 
whilst royal courtesans governed the political kingdom, the social 
world sought, if not a purer, at least a freer and more intellectual 
atmosphere. It was this corrupt weakness of the court, and that in- 
creasing influence of society, which raised the formidable power of 
the most celebrated man of the age ; it was these which gave him 
the keen weapon of ridicule he wielded so ruthlessly and so long • 
which made him protest by cynical writings against cynical abuses, 
and prepared the destruction of the brilliant society which almost 
worshipped the name of Voltaire. 

Nor was this society unconscious of its own fate. Three women, 
with that instinctive foresight which arises from the keenness of 
their perceptions, had already predicted the issue of all this. The 
honest indignation of Mademoiselle Aisse, the sense of Madame de 
Tencin, and the love of Madame de Chateauroux, led them to the 
same conclusion : the forthcoming and inevitable ruin of the State. 
It is a great but common error to suppose that only a few statesmen 
like Turgot, and that almost on the eve of the Revolution, could 
foretell what was then visible to every one. The predictions of the 
three ladies already quoted, if less detailed and eloquent, are fully 
as significant, and have undoubtedly the merit of priority. It is, 
therefore, an error to think that the consciousness of a future crisis, 
then generally felt in society, was one " to which only the manly 
and far-seeing mind of Turgot could give complete utterance, by 
predicting, as we find, him doing, that society was then hurrying on 
to some frightful convulsion."* 

Such feelings naturally added to the power of the philosophic and 
literary circles. It is true these circles were far from being pure ; 
their licentiousness was even the more repulsive that it was accom- 
panied by so much intellect : but, at the same time, there is, and 
always will be, in intellect, an irresistible attraction ; inducing men, 
not to excuse, but to suffer its errors, for the sake of the good by 

* Letters of Eminent Persons to David Hume. Introductory notice by J. 
H. Burton. 



96 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

which they are redeemed. Intellect is the source of moral great- 
ness and excellence. If it has been perverted, if the divine gift has 
been turned into evil, yet, even from that very perversion, future 
good may arise. Never was this principle more forcibly illustrated 
than in the times of which we are speaking. Against the sensual 
profligacy of falling monarchy, arose the formidable array of intel- 
lectual license. The rulers of France had recklessly trampled on 
every moral right. The philosophers as ruthlessly destroyed every 
divine tie, which, by linking man to Heaven, so firmly knits him to 
his brother man. 

With the rudeness of the Middle Ages vanished those stern and 
chivalrous virtues which have rendered them immortal. The phi- 
losophers acted as though they had resolved that not even the 
memory of those heroic times should remain, as a link between the 
degenerated descendants of Bayard and Dugueselin and the sons of 
the serfs : the pure and hallowed name of the maiden who freed her 
country from the stranger's yoke, was held up to scorn in licentious 
strains. Everywhere the past was insulted and reviled j everywhere 
moral ruins, more fearful than the empty and violated tombs of the 
royal dead in the abbey of Saint-Denis during the Revolution, 
met the beholder's eye : for on the human mind there had fallen a 
blight, which will make the eighteenth century appear, for ever, 
as a wide and fearful gulf between the past and the future of 
France. 

There is greatness in this power of intellect. True, it went too 
far ) true, it added to the work of destruction ; but, let it be remem- 
bered, the " mission" of the times was to destroy,-not to erect or 
create. In the moral as well as in the physical world, life may 
spring even from corruption and decay; and if institutions perish, 
there is a power of truth in the heart of man which cannot die. 



CHAPTER III. 

F 

Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet. 

The name of Voltaire fills the whole of the eighteenth century. 
It has seldom been given to one man, and that man an author, to 
exercise so great a power as that which he possessed. By identify- 
ing himself with all the passions, feelings, and prejudices of his con- 
temporaries; by clothing them with that brilliant style in which he 



VOLTAIRE. 97 

expressed liis keen scepticism and easy Epicurean philosophy, he 
naturally became the great organ of the age : a mission which only 
his vast and versatile mind could fulfil. 

It is impossible to speak of the eighteenth century, without 
alluding to Voltaire. More is necessary in this case; since his fate 
closely connected him with one of the most remarkable women of 
those times, the well-known Madame du Chatelet. Yoltaire has 
received, as the penalty of his high fame, too much unqualified praise 
and opprobrium. He was neither the perfect being his partizans 
idolized, nor the monster his enemies reviled. The feeling of hatred 
against him has been too bitter and unrelenting. This feeling was 

© O _ CD 

excited by his opinions, and not by his actions. It is the doctrines 
he professed, and particularly the manner in which he professed 
them, that drew down so much animadversion on his name. In his 
life, Yoltaire resembled other men : if he sometimes stooped to acts 
of petty spite and revenge unworthy of any man, many noble and 
generous actions nevertheless honour his memory. His errors were 
chiefly the result of the times on which he was cast : had he lived in 
a free country, and in a purer atmosphere than that which sur- 
rounded him, he would neither have sinned so deeply, nor, to say 
the truth, would he have won so much fame and power. 

But Yoltaire came at a period when faith and morality were 
almost equally weak ; when institutions were hastening to their 
inevitable decay ; and he brought with him one of those sarcastic 
and sceptical dispositions which are of every time, though they can 
only fulfil their destructive task at an epoch of general weakness 
and degradation. The scepticism of Yoltaire was displayed even in 
the Jesuit college where he was educated, and where one of the 
fathers foretold that he would prove the relentless foe of religion. 
No external influences removed those early signs of infidelity from 
the mind of the young Arouet — such was his real name. The pro- 
fligate Abbe de Chateauneuf introduced him into the coterie of the 
old Ninon de l'Enclos, where the youth was confirmed in the free 
and Epicurean Deism he ever after professed. When the unknown 
Arouet had become M. de Yoltaire the celebrated author, he found 
in his ambitious vanity a still greater inducement to follow the creed 
of the profligate and elegant society whose approbation he always 
courted with passionate eagerness. 

That his scepticism was neither very bold nor original, the timidity 
of his earlier works clearly proves. Success, by revealing to him 
the extent of his power, first rendered him reckless and free : whilst 
the world for which he wrote admired him, and shared his feelings, 
Yoltaire might well despise the paltry persecutions of a weak govern- 
ment. Had he appeared at another period, and attacked the pre- 
valent opinions of society with the same perseverance he displayed 
9 



98 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

in attacking things that were falling to ruin, he conld justly have 
been termed a daring thinker. As it was, he had little claim to 
that title. The world was with him, and he knew it well : he knew 
that even those whose position bound them to persecute him openly, 
favoured him and his doctrine in the secret of their hearts ; and the 
consciousness of this might well act as a compensation for whatever 
annoyances he had to endure. 

From the first, Voltaire was guided by the desire of success. He 
attacked what he believed to be error, and what he supported he 
considered to be the truth ; but, in all that he upheld and opposed, 
he was not actuated by that singleness of purpose which elevates 
and purifies the mind. It was in this respect that Voltaire was 
eminently a sceptic. Faith was not in his nature : he never had 
that fervent and disinterested love of truth which, even in an erro- 
neous cause, can make heroes and martyrs. He wrote for glory and 
distinction : a few court favours, without changing his creed, would 
have kept him silent. It is this want of earnestness, and not merely 
his scepticism, that ought to be condemned. What right had the 
man who valued his own opinions so little, to insult and revile the 
creed of others ? What right had he, for the gratification of his 
vanity, to sow doubt and dismay in the minds of those who believed 
and found consolation in that belief? 

There is much in this that explains the inconsistency of Voltaire's 
attacks on Revelation, the insincerity by which he disgraced and 
forwarded his cause, and the perfidious use which he made of ridi- 
cule, where, if truth was with him, reasoning ought to have sufficed. 
It was thus that he gratified his insatiable wish of fame : but it was 
dearly purchased at the cost of morality and an honourable inde- 
pendence. Voltaire was, however, by the nature of his mind, less 
guilty than this assertion may at first seem to imply. The truth is, 
that he had no fixed principles on any subject: he passed from one 
impression to another with an ease and rapidity almost unequalled. 
He was susceptible of any emotion ; and, though sense and sarcasm 
predominated in his mind, they never ruled it entirely. This infinite 
variety of impulses, which gave so great a charm to his style, ren- 
dered his character an extraordinary compound of the most opposite 
qualities and defects. Voltaire was at the same time generous and 
vindictive ; independent, and yet a flatterer of the great ; timid, and 
ever committing himself by new acts of imprudence : he even recon- 
ciled the seeming impossibility of warm but transient enthusiasm 
accompanied by a scoffing scepticism. 

But Voltaire, in good or in evil, never went beyond mere impulse. 
There is nothing great in his private or in his public life. Those who 
loved and admired him most, confessed that the endless vivacity of his 
mind weared even whilst it dazzled. - He passed from childish im- 



MADAME DU CHATELET. 99 

patience to rapturous admiration, and from that again to deep sar- 
casm and irony j but, whichever mood he took, it was marred by the 
want of that stability of principle without which a character will 
ever fail in grace and harmony. 

The writings of Voltaire bear the impress of his mind. They 
have all the vivacity and versatility of talent by which he was cha- 
racterized. His prose is still unrivalled for clearness, purity, and 
elegance. As a poet — if, indeed, Voltaire may be called a poet — 
he ranks infinitely lower. All his works are disfigured by that in- 
tolerant and declamatory tone which contributed to their immense 
success, but which has been justly reproved by posterity. Great 
geniuses belong to every age : Voltaire was essentially the man of 
his own times. He had, indeed, no aspirations higher than those of 
the world in which he lived ; that world was moral, was great enough 
for him. He was indifferent to serious political changes : his tastes 
and feelings were essentially aristocratic. At the same time his keen 
and practical good sense made him desire ardently the total freedom 
and independence of thought — the true basis of every other freedom — 
and the absence of which was doubly galling to a mind so impatient 
of restraint as was his. These remarks on Voltaire are by no means 
intended as a comprehensive view of his extraordinary and varied 
character ; they were introduced because, however deficient they may 
be, the subject of this work rendered them indispensable. 

We have already mentioned that the fate of Voltaire was closely 
linked with that of an eminent woman of those times, Madame du 
Chatelet, whose commanding mind understood and commented on 
Newton and Leibnitz, and entitled her to the high praise bestowed 
upon her by M. Ampere : "c'est un genie en geonietrie!" Emilie 
Gabrieile de Breteuil had received a classical education, to which 
was united every accomplishment then in fashion ; she had an ex- 
cellent knowledge of Latin, Italian, and English. Her parents mar- 
ried her in her nineteenth year to the Marquis du Chatelet, an honest 
but commonplace man considerably her senior. 

The young marchioness made her appearance in the world with 
much eclat. She was tall and graceful, and her blue eyes, dark hair, 
and expressive countenance entitled her, in youth, to the epithet of 
handsome. Her great talents long remained unsuspected. The world 
only saw in her a fine woman who sang and played exquisitely, and 
who seemed passionately fond of dress, hunting, and cavagnole. The 
Duke of Richelieu was then in the height of his fame for gallantry; 
few of the women, to whom he paid any attention, had sufficient 
principle to resist him. Madame du Chatelet, whose ideas of morality 
were those of her time, proved no exception to the general rule. 
The connection between her and the duke was, however, extremely 
brief, and ended — very differently from most of his love intrigues — 



100 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

in a sincere and mutual friendship. Madame du Cbatelet afterwards 
alluded to this transient liaison, in her letters to the Duke of Riche- 
lieu, with a mixture of regret and levity characteristic of jthe period. 
"Who would have thought," she wrote to her former lover, after a 
fit of illness, "that friendship could have caused me to be regretted 
by Madame de Richelieu, Voltaire, and you ? I scarcely hoped for 
love to do this. We are happy only by these two feelings. I 
confess that in them lies all the happiness of my life." And 
further on, " I believe in my own worth since I begin to think 
that you have a sincere friendship for me. You know my heart, 
and how really engrossed it is now" — (by Voltaire) — u I feel proud 
of loving in you the friend of my lover. This feeling would add 
to the pleasure which I find in our friendship, if I had not em- 
bittered it. I cannot forgive myself for having entertained any 
other feeling for you, however slight it ma}- have been." Of poor 
M. du Chatelet, or of regret at deceiving him, not one word. 

Madame du Chatelet loved pleasure, but she was not fitted for a 
merely worldly life. Wearied of dissipation, she entered with ardour 
on the study of the exact sciences. The brilliant but shallow 3Iau- 
pertuis was her teacher in geometry. He then enjoyed that high 
degree of female admiration which first fired the emulation of Helve- 
tius. Whenever he walked in the Tuileries, Maupertuis was sur- 
rounded by a crowd of elegant and fashionable women. Geometry 
was then as much the rage as were the pantins at a later period. 
With some ladies it went so far as to induce them to study under 
the admired teacher. A kind of playful rivalry subsisted between 
Madame de Richelieu and Madame du Chatelet, for the lessons of 
their mutual friend, Maupertuis. With Madame du Chatelet, the 
matter was not, however, merely one of fashion; as was proved by 
the rapid progress which she made in a science for which her mind 
was strikingly adapted. She was studying the works of Newton 
when she met Voltaire, then recently returned from England, and, 
like her, an enthusiastic admirer of Newton's sublime discoveries. 
This similarity of tastes proved the first link between these two 
kindred spirits, and originated the long and celebrated, connection 
between the Divine Emilie and the great sceptic of the eighteenth 
century. 

Enamoured of her beauty, and still more of her passionate devo- 
tion to science, Voltaire addressed his fair mistress, under the appro- 
priate name of Urania, in a very tender strain. 

Madame du Chatelet was then in her twenty-eighth year. Voltaire 
was twelve years her senior. The loose maxims of the time justified 
their connection in the opinion of the world and in their own. They 
might indeed have adopted a higher and nobler standard of morality, 
but that they did not do so must be less a matter of surprise than 



MADAME DU CHATELET. 101 

one of regret. As it grew more polished and sceptical, the aristoc- 
racy lost those virtues which can only exist in ages of a severe and 
enthusiastic faith. The chivalrous honour of man and the chastity 
of woman, first yielded to the corrupting breath of the times. The 
philosophy which both the lovers professed, was, moreover, neither 
severe nor restrictive : as their conduct, indeed, plainly showed. 
Madame du Chatelet was one of the first ladies of the aristocracy 
who joined the philosophic party; but in this, as well as in her con- 
nection with Voltaire, she still observed appearances, which her 
position in the world did not allow her to neglect, and accordingly 
attended mass with her lover, whilst, like him, she secretly wrote 
against Revelation. The same spirit of policy made Voltaire in his 
youth write verses in praise of the Virgin and the Saviour, whilst 
he attacked Christianity in private. Scepticism had not yet assumed 
the bold and open tone by which it was afterwards distinguished. 
Men still paid a vain show of outward respect to what they secretly 
hated, idly thinking that this dangerous irreverence would not pass 
beyond their own privileged ranks. Never was so much inconsistency 
of conduct displayed. The necessity of a religion for the inferior 
classes was contemptuously acknowledged by those who undermined 
it, apparently forgetting that the advantages of wealth and station 
they enjoyed, rested on what they termed the ignorance and the 
fanaticism of the poor. If the privileges of rank were founded on 
folly and injustice, and if that religion which commands to bear in- 
justice patiently was a dream, what security had they ? It seems 
incredible that self-interest should not have checked all those philo- 
sophic and liberal tendencies, in the upper ranks at least. But it 
is a testimony to eternal truth, that even those who are to suffer 
most by its progress are involuntarily induced to forward its cause. 
Much of error as the growing philosophy contained, it nevertheless 
originated in a deep sense of the injustice and worthlessness of ex- 
isting institutions. The only real matter of surprise is, that the 
philosophic aristocracy, who, whilst they acknowledged their privi- 
leges to be valueless in the eyes of reason, were nowise disposed to 
relinquish them, should have thought of confining their feelings to 
themselves. There can be no attempt more futile, none which shows 
so slight an acquaintance with the laws by which society is governed, 
than that which would endeavour to limit good or evil knowledge to 
one peculiar class. Sooner or later it must pass the barrier fixed by 
human vanity and pride. 

The knowledge which the reader already possesses of the maxims 
of those times, will explain why the connection of Voltaire and 
Madame du Chatelet was considered neither guilty nor unusual, by 
the society in which they lived. No one therefore expressed any 
surprise when Voltaire took up his residence at Cirey, a splendid 

9* 



102 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

chateau which M. du Chatelet possessed in the province of Lor- 
raine. As it was necessary, however, to observe appearances, Vol- 
taire protested that his attachment for Madame du Chatelet was 
purely platonic. " I confess," he observed, " that she is tyran- 
nical : one must talk about metaphysics, when the temptation is to 
talk of love. Ovid was formerly my master, it is now the turn of 
Locke." M. du Chatelet either did not suspect the truth, or if he 
did, he felt indifferent to it. He certainly raised no objection to the 
sojourn of Voltaire under his roof, and was rather nattered at being 
considered the host and patron of a man already enjoying European 
fame. As he spent the greatest portion of, his time with his regi- 
ment, his presence proved little or no restraint to the lovers, who 
treated him with great respect. 

The fifteen years which he spent at Cirey were perhaps the hap- 
piest Voltaire ever knew, notwithstanding the occasional differences 
which arose between him and Madame du Chatelet. To a man so 
eminently intellectual as he was, so much attached to every elegance 
and refinement of private life, no woman, unless one almost as 
highly gifted as himself, could have long proved attractive. Such, 
if the praise of a lover is to be trustee^ was Madame du Chate- 
let :— 

L'esprit sublime et la delicatesse, 
L'oubli cbarmant cle sa propre beaute, 
L'amitie tendre et l'amour emporte, 
Sont les attraits de ma belle maitresse. 

The mind of Madame clu Chatelet was greatly superior to her 
personal attractions, and even to her learning. Without excusing 
her relaxed morals, it must be admitted that, notwithstanding her 
errors, she possessed great qualities. As a friend, she was devoted 
and sincere. Her attachment for Voltaire was full of truth and 
earnestness. She made it her constant task to soothe his susceptible 
vanity, hushing up by her personal influence the ridicule his impru- 
dences so often excited, and concealing from him those contemptible 
libels of his enemies, by which he was so deeply distressed during 
his whole life-time. Madame du Chatelet was herself nobly indif- 
ferent to such attacks. On being shown one day a pamphlet in 
which she had not been spared, she calmly observed, " If the author 
has lost his time in writing such nonsense, I shall not lose mine in 
reading it." She learned next day that the guilty individual had 
been imprisoned; and immediately wrote to obtain his release. She 
succeeded, but never let him know from whom he had received this 
favour. 

Few women of her time were so free as Madame du Chatelet from 
that intriguing spirit and thirst for distinction, by which almost all 
were then possessed. Science she loved for its own sake : for the pure 



MADAME DU CHATELET. 103 

and exquisite delights it yielded to her inquiring mind, and not for 
the paltry gratification of being considered a learned woman. She 
never sought to gather a literary coterie around her ; never showed 
the least wish to dictate in matters of which she was so excellent a 
judge. Many persons with whom she was in the habit of associat- 
ing, remained unconscious of her great talents ', so little did she care 
to display them. Indifferent to praise, unless when it came from 
experienced judges, and then she probably felt it to be her due, 
she always disdained the easy advantage of shining amongst the 
ignorant. It was this love of science for its own sake, this haughty 
contempt of easy and showy success, that rendered Madame du 
Chatelet infinitely superior to the women with whom she mingled ) 
and which almost maddened the envious Madame du Deffand, whilst 
it even discomposed the philosophy of the more amiable Madame 
de Staal. 

At the same time it must be confessed that, even morality and 
religion set apart, the character of Madame du Chatelet was far from 
being a faultless one. With all her philosophy, she was as proud 
of her rank and birth a« any court lady. She treated her inferiors 
with a cold superciliousness, that showed she fully felt their vast 
distance from herself. Her delicacy on many points was nowise re- 
markable. According to Madame de Graffigny, she was in the 
habit of opening all the letters that left Cirey or came to it ) pro- 
bably fearing lest anything concerning herself or Voltaire should be 
divulged. Her temper was violent and imperious. She ruled de- 
spotically over her lover, and left him very little personal freedom. 
Had he yielded entirely to her influence in literary matters, he 
would have written fewer tragedies, and devoted more of his time 
to science and history. It was indeed chiefly to comply with her 
wishes, that he wrote ." L'Essai sur les Moeurs et Tesprit des Na- 
tions." The good qualities of Madame du Chatelet consisted more 
in a certain haughty independence of mind, in an untiring affection 
for those whom she loved, than in any very amiable traits. She 
was deficient in gentleness and in many of the most winning qualities 
of woman, but there was nevertheless in her so little affectation and 
intrigue, and so much of what was good and true, as to command 
respect, at an epoch when other women, possessing her position in 
life and her great mental acquirements, would not have rested satis- 
fied until they had made France and all Europe echo with their 
praises. 

It was by her simplicity of manner, as well as by the great solidity 
of her judgment, that Madame du Chatelet charmed Voltaire : too 
keen a judge of every thing like affectation to tolerate it long. Even 
as it was, his satirical vein could not always refrain from an indirect 
sneer at the divine Einilie's enthusiastic pursuit of algebra, which 



104 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

was somewhat singularly mingled with more frivolous tastes. Ma- 
dame du Chatelet appears to have been very much attached to pom- 
poms, a favourite ornament in the dress of the times. Voltaire 
observes, in his correspondence : 

" Cette belle ame est une etoffe 
Qu'elle brotle en mille facons; 
Son esprit est ties philosophe 
Et son coeur aime les pompoms."' 

" Mais les pompoms et le monde sont de son age, et son merite est 
au dessus de son age, de son sexe et du notre." According to the 
same authority, Voltaire himself was by no means indifferent to his 
toilette, and appeared in Cirey attired with all the elegance of a 
courtier of Versailles. 

The life of this learned couple, in then- delightful retreat, was one 
of study, varied by elegant pleasures. The apartments they occu- 
pied at Cirey were adorned with all the luxuries art and wealth 
could devise. Costly hangings, choice pictures, and rare books ; 
everything, in short, which could attract the e} r e and please the 
mind was there. Voltaire caused, at great expense, a gallery to be 
fitted up with all the scientific instruments he and Madame du 
Chatelet needed. In this gallery also stood a statue of Cupid — no 
unapt illustration of their scientific loves — with the famous inscrip- 
tion beneath it — 

Qui que tu sois voici ton maitre : 
11 lest, le fut on le doit etre. 

Over the entrance to this gallery, Voltaire had likewise caused to 
be inscribed — 

Asile des beaux-arts, solitude ou mon ecpiir 
Est toujours oceupe dans une paix profbnde, 

C'est volis qui donnez le bonheur 

Qui promettait en vain le monde. 

The door of the little Belvedere where Madame du Chatelet studied 
was also poetically adorned — 

Du repos, une douce etude, 
Peu de Jivres, point d'ennuyeux 
Un ami dans la solitude, 
Voila mon sort, il est heureux. 

Voltaire celebrated his love for Madame du Chatelet under almost 
every form. He wrote innumerable verses in her praise, and seemed 
never weary of mentioning her great talents and excellent qualities 
to his friends. The sincerity and disinterestedness of her affection, 
the admirable strength and clearness of her comprehensive mind, 
are themes to which he ever willingly returns in his correspondence. 



VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DTJ CHATELET. 105 

Madame du Chatelet was no poet; she, however, composed a Latin 
verse for Voltaire, which was afterwards engraved on his tomb — 

"Post genitis hie carus erit, nunc cams amicis." 

Madame du Chatelet only slept for three hours, in order to leave 
more time for study. Her temper was too ardent to allow her to 
follow Montesquieu's judicious advice: " You do not sleep in order 
to study philosophy; but you should, on the contrary, study philo- 
sophy in order to learn how to sleep soundly." The whole of the 
day was also devoted to her beloved studies. She seldom came down 
to dinner, but remained closeted in her apartment, commenting on 
Newton and Leibnitz, or continuing her written and animated con- 
troversy with M. de Mairan, the secretary of the Academy of Sciences. 
Besides her correspondence with Richelieu and Maupertuis, she wrote 
to several philosophers, and, among the rest, to Diderot, for whom 
she employed her influence when his imprudent writings had caused 
him to be incarcerated in Vincennes. 

Voltaire, in the mean while, was composing u Merope," or " Zaire/' 
by stealth : for Madame du Chatelet, herself wrapped up in algebra, 
always discouraged his poetical labours; or he was adding, perchance, 
a few pages to his " Siecle de Louis XIV." He occasionally diver- 
sified these occupations by peevishly fretting over some new libel of 
l'Abbe Desfontaines, which had reached him, notwithstanding all 
Madame du Chatelet's vigilance; or by sending off to his Parisian 
friends those inimitable Letters of his, which sparkle with all the 
wit, satire, and caprice of his versatile mind. Epigrams against his 
enemies; extravagant praises of the divine Emilie, of whose yoke 
he was sometimes heartily weary, or of Frederick of Prussia; que- 
rulous complaints of the persecutions which he, favoured among all 
who ever wrote, is compelled to endure; bursts of philosophic in- 
tolerance, succeeded by the effusions of a generous spirit, and the 
most amusing assurances, daily repeated for the last fifty years of 
his life, "that he is positively dying:" such are a few of the many 
characteristics of Voltaire's long and varied correspondence. 

He did not meet Madame du Chatelet until the hour of supper. 
She then came down, and the rest of the evening was spent in 
conversation. Voltaire submitted his labours of the day to her 
judgment; Madame du Chatelet spoke of her scientific pursuits, 
giving a charm to those abstruse matters by the clearness and ele- 
gance of her language. Though she devoted almost the whole of 
her time to science, her taste in general literature was, notwithstand- 
ing, pure and correct. She possessed that exquisite conversational 
style, if we may so speak, which characterized the clever woman of 
the age; and it was whilst living in daily intercourse with her that 
Voltaire produced his most perfect works. Cirey was often visited 



10G WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

by literary and scientific individuals, who came to admire the charm- 
ing retirement of these two kindred spirits. Madame de G-raffigny, 
the clever authoress of the Peruvian Letters, spent a few weeks with 
them. The amiable President Henault also appeared there, bring- 
ing with him all the philosophic satire and scandal which Madame 
du Deffand was gathering in her convent of Saint- Joseph. A Prus- 
sian count sent by Frederick, then crown prince of Prussia, visited 
Cirey, in order to present the portrait of his master to Voltaire, and 
indifferent verses to Venus-Newton, as the prince styled Madame du 
Chatelet. Madame Denise, the favourite gossiping niece of Voltaire, 
d'Argens, the sceptical author of the Jewish Letters, likewise spent 
some time at Cirey ; besides such scientific men as Maupertuis, Kcenig, 
Clairault, and Algarotti, who came chiefly for the purpose of con- 
versing with Madame du Chatelet: pursuing their mutual studies in 
her apartment, to the great annoyance of Voltaire, who condescended 
to feel somewhat jealous on these occasions. Notwithstanding his 
secret vexation, he treated Madame du Chatelet' s learned guests 
with due courtesy. "'We read," he observes, during the stay of 
Algarotti, "a few cantos of ' Jeanne la Pucell/ or one of my trage- 
dies, or a chapter from the Siecle of Louis XIV. Thence we return 
to Locke and Newton : nor do we abstain from champagne and good 
cheer, for, indeed, we are very voluptuous philosophers." The tact 
of Madame du Chatelet diversified these amusements. She sang 
and played for the pleasure of her guests; or, with the aid of a few 
neighbours and Voltaire, acted his tragedies and comedies, on a pretty 
little stage, which she had caused to be constructed for that purpose. 
As she was an excellent actress, especially in comic parts, these en- 
tertainments proved really amusing. When Voltaire was unwell, 
Madame du Chatelet relinquished study and pleasure, in order to sit 
by his bedside and read to him the works of Cicero, Virgil, Pope, or 
Newton, in the original languages. 

Madame du Chatelet and her lover did not, however, spend the 
whole of their time at Cirey. They visited Paris every year, and 
remained for a few months at the hotel Richelieu. The young 
duchess, a woman remarkable for her beauty, accomplishments, and 
for the passionate attachment she felt to the last for her faithless 
husband, was the intimate friend of Madame du Chatelet; who, as 
well as Voltaire, had been instrumental in effecting her marriage. 
She studied geometry under Maupertuis, and her knowledge of 
Newton's philosophy even enabled her to obtain a triumph recorded 
by Voltaire.* 

* " II faut pourtant vous dire a l'lionneur de notre cour de Versailles et a 
l'honneur des ferames, que Madame de Richelieu a fait un coins de physique 
dans cette salle des machines; quelle est devenue une assez bonne Newton- 



VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHATELET. 107 

Madame du Chatelet entered into the pursuit of pleasure with 
the same passionate eagerness with which she studied Newton's 
"Principia" in her learned retirement. Her brief sojourn in Paris 
was accordingly marked by a round of dissipation and amusements. 
As a relaxation; she occasionally gave choice dejeuners in a country 
auberge, to which no man was admitted. Her guests were Madame 
du Deffand, the profligate Madame de Boufflers, Madame de Mailly 
— then the king's mistress — Madame du Gonvernet, and the pretty 
Madame de la Popeliniere. These ladies, all handsome and witty, 
greatly enjoyed their privacy. 

The excessive love of dress displayed by the learned Enrilie, 
which had induced Voltaire to name her Madame Newton-Pompom 
du Chatelet, often led her into serious expenses ; nothing equalled, 
however, by the large sums she lost at play. On one night she 
lost no less than 80,000 livres at Versailles. Voltaire imprudently 
told her that she had to deal with cheats. This remark having 
been overheard, he was obliged to leave the palace precipitately, 
and seek for a refuge at Sceaux, where Madame du Maine agreed 
to conceal him. For six weeks he remained hidden in an upper 
room, writing by candle light, and no one but Madame du Maine 
herself being aware of his presence. When all the inmates were at 
rest, he came down, supped with the duchess, and read to her frag- 
ments of his prose novels, which he had composed partly for her 
amusement. In the mean while, Madame du Chatelet was busy 
collecting money to pay the sum she had lost, and endeavoured to 
pacify the persons to whom Voltaire's imprudent remark had given 
offence. It was not until she had succeeded in effecting both ob- 
jects, that she made her appearance at Sceaux with Voltaire. 

If we may trust the petulant effusions of the ennuyee Madame 
de Staal to her friend Madame du Deffand, the learned pair were 
little appreciated by the society of Sceaux, on this visit, as well as 
on the subsequent ones they paid to Madame du Maine. "Madame 
du Chatelet and Voltaire," she observes in 1747, "who had an- 
nounced their arrival for to-day, appeared yesterday, towards mid- 
night, like two ghosts, bringing with them a smell of embalmed 
corpses from their tombs. Everyone had already left the table; 
but they were famished spectres, and wanted some supper. They, 
moreover, required beds, which were not prepared. The porter, 
who was already in bed, had to rise hastily. Gaya having offered 
his apartment, in case of need, was now obliged to give it up. He 

ienne, et qu'elle a confondn publiquement certain predicateur Jesuite qui ne 
savait que des mots, et qui s ; avisa de disputer, en bavard, contre des faits et 
con t re de l'esprit. 11 fut hue avec son eloquence et Madame de Richelieu 
d'autant plus admiree qu'elle est femme et duchesse." 



108 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

effected his removal with as much precipitation and displeasure as 
an army surprised in its camp and leaving part of its baggage in 
the power of the foe." Further on she resumes the subject with 
the same irony. " Our ghosts do not show themselves by daylight: 
they appeared yesterday at ten in the evening. I do not suppose 
we shall see them earlier to-day. One is busy narrating high deeds, 
the other comments on Newton. Madame du Chatelet has already 
changed her apartment three times : she could endure no longer 
that which she had chosen. It was full of noise and smoke, with- 
out any fire" (I rather look on this as her emblem). " She is now 
taking a review of her ' principles.' She renews this practice every 
year, as they might escape otherwise, and go so far that she would 
never find one of them again. I verily believe her head is their 
stronghold, and not the place of their birth. She does well to 
watch over them carefully." 

The merits of Madame du Chatelet were not, indeed, likely to be 
fully appreciated by the frivolous court of Madame du Maine. But 
though she devoted the whole of the day to study, she contributed, 
in the evening, to the general amusement by singing and acting the 
pastoral play of Isse, and Voltaire's comedies, with so much talent 
that even Madame de Staal confessed herself amused. Yoltaire 
addressed his mistress thus : — 

" Charmante Isse, vous nous faites entendre 
Dans ces beaux lieux les sons les plus flattenrs, 
lis vont droit a nos coeurs: 
Leibnitz n'a point de nomades plus tendres 
Newton d'x x plus enchanteurs/' 

But notwithstanding all his poetical compliments, poor Yoltaire 
was singularly annoyed by his "charmante Isse," who, regardless of 
an author's feelings, but by no means indifferent to the success of 
her charms, persisted in appearing in the part of the homely Made- 
moiselle de la Cochonniere, attired with all the elegance of a court 
lady. Yoltaire remonstrated; but, as Madaine de Staal pithily 
observed, "she is the mistress; he is the slave." 

After spending a few months in Paris, Yoltaire and Madame du 
Chatelet generally returned to their pleasant retreat. Events oc- 
casionally caused them to separate; their correspondence was then 
extremely active. According to Voisenon, Madame du Chatelet 
had eight thick volumes of Yoltaire' s letters. The same authority 
asserts that they contained more epigrams against religion than 
verses in the praise of his mistress; a fact not at all unlikely. These 
letters were probably destroyed by the family of Madame du Chate- 
let, after her death, for nothing of them has remained. 

Long as the love of Yoltaire and Madame du Chatelet had lasted, 
it was not destined to resist time and habit. The first change came 



VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHATELET. 109 

from Voltaire. His increasing coldness alarmed Madame du Chate- 
let. When she first spoke to him on the subject, he reminded her 
of his declining years, and answered her reproaches by the charming 
verses : — 

"Si vous voulez que j'aime encore 
Ah rendez moi I'age des amours," &c. 

After many stormy explanations, Madame du Chatelet, seeing 
that friendship had replaced love in Voltaire's heart, submitted to 
this change in his feelings ; which caused none in their mode of life. 
An affection which could thus resist time, and modify itself with 
years, instead of perishing utterly, must have been founded on much 
that was good and true. 

In this altered mood the two friends proceeded from Cirey to 
Luneville, where Stanislaus, the father of Marie Lecsinska, ruled 
over a polished and elegant little court. It was there that Madame 
du Chatelet first saw Saint-Lambert. He was then nothing more 
than a handsome young nobleman of elegant address : he afterwards 
obtained some reputation by his cold imitations of the English poets ; 
but his was indeed a " tiny genius/' as Walpole justly remarked. 
He is less known .for any individual merits of his own, than for 
having been the successful rival in love of the two greatest writers 
of the age — Voltaire and Rousseau. Madame du Chatelet was still 
handsome ; her great talents caused her to be universally admired. 
Vanity induced Saint-Lambert to pay her attentions which Madame 
du Chatelet attributed to a deeper feeling, and which she was frail 
enough to return by a very sincere affection. Voltaire, on discover- 
ing that he had a rival, felt both grieved and indignant. His first 
impulse was to leave Madame du Chatelet immediately. Though 
she disguised nothing from him, her remonstrances and assurances 
of unabated friendship induced him to remain. Saint- Lambert, by 
great professions of admiration for the genius of Voltaire, even suc- 
ceeded in conciliating his favour. The self-love of the poet proved 
stronger than the remnant of jealousy with which he had seen 
another possess the place he had once held in the heart of the divine 
Emilie. 

There is little to excuse this part of Madame du Chatelet' s life. 
Her age, and that feeling of worldly self-respect which is inspired 
by the fear of ridicule, ought at least to have preserved her from 
this last error ; with which were connected many disgraceful cir- 
cumstances, and which was destined to prove so fatal to her. 

After a brief stay at Luneville, Madame du Chatelet and Voltaire 

parted from Saint-Lambert and returned to Cirey. Madame du 

Chatelet seemed extremely anxious to finish her great work, the 

translation of Newton's " Principia :" she laboured at it both day 

10 



110 WOMAN IN FKANCE. 

and night, and appeared to possess a foreboding of her melancholy 
fate. Neither the efforts of Voltaire nor the letters of Saint-Lam- 
bert could remove her despondency. On her return to Luneville, 
her health, which had been failing for some time, became worse, and 
on the 10th of August, 1749, she died in childbed, after a few days 
of brief illness. 

Voltaire was overwhelmed with despair, and his grief was both 
lasting and sincere. Shortly after the death of Madame du Chatelet, 
we find him writing thus to d'Argental : — 

" I am going to Cirey for two days. Thence I shall go to spend 
two days more with a friend of this great man and this unhappy 

woman I will even acknowledge to you, that a house 

which she once inhabited, though it may overwhelm me with grief, 
is not disagreeable to me. I do not dread my affliction ; I do not 
avoid that which may remind me of her : I like Cirey ; I could not 
bear Luneville, where I lost her in a more melancholy manner than 
you can imagine. But the place which she once embellished is 
dear to me. It is not a mistress that I have lost : I have lost the 
half of my being — a soul for which mine was made — a friend of 
twenty years, whom I had known since her birth. The most tender 
father feels no different love for his only daughter. I like to find 
a memorial of her everywhere." 

There is much that is touching in these simple expressions of 
grief ; much that explains, better than the most elaborate comment- 
ary, the affection which united Voltaire and Madame du Chatelet. 

Scarcely was the unhappy woman in her grave, when all the 
opprobrium, all the bitter revilings, which malice and envy could 
rouse against her, followed her memory. There is something 
literally revolting in the brutality with which the errors of Madame 
du Chatelet were attacked. Her intimate friend, Madame du Def- 
fand, distinguished herself by her bitterness. She wrote, and caused 
to be extensively circulated, a portrait of the deceased lady, in which 
her person and her life were equally vilified. When this production 
was shown by the author to Thomas, he coolly observed, that it 
reminded him of an observation once made by a medical acquaint- 
ance of his concerning one of his patients : " My friend fell ill - I 
attended him. He died; and I dissected him." We do not intend 
to justify Madaine du Chatelet : she doubtless committed great 
errors ; but those who attacked and held up her failings to the piti- 
less derision of the world had no right to do so. Madame du 
Chatelet erred because she adopted their principles, and put them 
into practice : three times in her life she had wandered from the 
straight path. Would Madame du Deffand and her associates in 
malice have been able to specify the number of their errors? She 
was frail, when they were profligate : she yielded to passion, when 



VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHATELET. Ill 

they gave themselves up to licentiousness. The real cause why 
Madame du Chatelet' s memory was treated with so much bitterness 
was her great superiority to most of the women with whom she 
associated. She equalled them in that graceful wit of which they 
were so vain, but she disdained to apply it to the purpose of gather- 
ing around her a coterie of admirers; and she surpassed them, not 
only by that dignified disdain, but also by a superiority of intellect, 
and by an aptitude for science to which few women have attained. 
It was this, and to have fascinated such a man as "Voltaire, that 
could not be, and was not, forgiven. 

Those who would have some right to speak — the women whose 
pure and unblemished lives were the open condemnation of Madame 
du Chatelet' s errors — remained silent; the task of upbraiding her 
memory was left to her former friends : to those who, during her 
lifetime, would have derided her scruples, had she manifested any. 
Some there were, however, besides Voltaire and her intimate friends, 
who, whilst they were not blind to her errors, could acknowledge 
Madame du Chatelet's high qualities. Amongst these was Clairault, 
who had been one of her instructors : he testified the deepest grief 
on hearing of her death, and immediately went into mourning ; he 
was never heard to speak of her but with mingled admiration and 
respect. The grief of Voltaire naturally subsided with time; but he 
never forgot Madame du Chatelet. When he mentioned her name, 
it was with a tender feeling of regret for her loss, and an enthusiastic 
admiration of her great talents. After her death, he chiefly resided 
in Switzerland; where,. as it was his lot to be swayed by women, 
he submitted to the dominion of the extravagant Madame Denis. 
As he grew in years, Voltaire increased in power and fame. All 
the sovereigns of Europe paid their court to the illustrious patriarch 
of Ferney. The man who was rapidly and surely aiding the destruc- 
tion of society, was still, as a token of the times, its cherished idol. 

If so much space — with regard to the limits of this work — has 
been devoted to Madame du Chatelet, it is not merely on account 
of her own personal merits, or even because of her connection with 
Voltaire. The reader who wishes to know what the aristocracy of 
those times really were, can judge of them now, better than by any 
mere assertion of the author. Madame du Chatelet is a very favour- 
able and appropriate illustration of her class. Her relaxed morals 
— the mixture of pride, worldliness, and intellect, by which she 
was distinguished — her strong tendency towards what was then 
called philosophy — her external observance of every convenance — 
and her total want of religious feeling — are alike characteristic of 
her station and of her age. The few incidents of her life are equally 
significant. Her connection with Voltaire (which, on account of the 
great difference of rank between them, would have been an event un- 



112 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

heard of a century earlier); the easy tolerance of her husband; the 
facility with which Voltaire himself allowed Saint-Lambert to re- 
place him in her affections, alike betray the gradual decline of the 
old nobles, and the increasing corruption of the times. But though 
it is chiefly as a sample of what the women of high rank then really 
were that Madame du Chatelet has been considered here, it is not 
intended to assert that she had no personal influence. Far from it; 
she not only contributed to spread among her countrymen a greater 
knowledge of scientific matters, but, by her own example, added to 
the strength of the Anglomania which was already beginning to pre- 
vail in France. 

Voltaire, Madame du Chatelet, and Montesquieu were among 
the first who introduced into polite society the admiration of England. 
The Regent, before his accession to power, and whilst still under 
the dominion of Louis XIV., had loudly praised, with his roues, that 
independence which existed in the neighbouring country. His own 
personal sympathies connected him with the House of Hanover, and 
to which his mother was allied. Even then the Orleans branch of 
the royal family was suspected of a wish to profit by the errors of 
the reigning Bourbons, as the House of Hanover had taken ad- 
vantage of the errors of the Stuarts. Montesquieu brought back 
from England his enthusiastic admiration of freedom and constitu- 
tional monarchy; Voltaire partly derived his scepticism from the 
English philosophers; Madame du Chatelet' s object was science. As 
a woman she could spread her predilections with greater ease than 
the most gifted men. Fashion then ruled everything; scepticism 
itself would not have succeeded if it had not been fashionable. 
The influence of Madame du Chatelet with regard to the admiration 
of England, and all that was English, is not therefore to be slighted. 
This admiration of a foreign country soon became a powerful means 
of opposition at home with the philosophic party. TVhen women 
had lent their aid to this feeling, it became omnipotent. The 
supreme bon ton henceforth was to affect English manners at court, 
and Prussian discipline in the army. This apparently anti-national 
movement was pregnant with a great truth : France looked up to 
foreign nations for her model, because she saw in herself nothing 
to admire or venerate. 

The influence which Madame du Chatelet exercised in this respect 
was not felt so much during her lifetime as after her death. Her 
name was then no slight authority for those who maintained the 
superiority of everything English over French. 

TYe have now done with this remarkable woman : for such, with 
all her errors, she undoubtedly was, if we judge her, as we are in 
fairness bound to do, after the standard of her own times. Judged 
by that standard, she will not soon be forgotten. Madame du Chatelet 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 113 

is now chiefly remembered for her devotedness to science: her 
labours have indeed been far outstripped, and, if her works are still 
known, they are probably no longer read; but science, like all that 
is intellectual and great, ennobles those who once toiled in her 
cause. Even though they should have effected but little, and 
though that little should be useless now, yet, whilst it is known 
that in their day they added their mite to the great store of univer- 
sal knowledge, their names will be long and gratefully remembered. 



CHAPTER IY. 

The philosophers. — Literary societies. — Madame D"Epinay. — Rousseau. 

From the learned retirement of Cirey we must now return to the 
Parisian world. The philosophic party had there made rapid strides 
since the days of Madame de Tencin and Madame de la Popeliniere : 
bureaux d'esprit were now opened to them on every side. 

The history of French philosophy during the eighteenth century 
is, in reality, the history of that century itself. Reverses in war, 
dishonourable peace, confusion and misery at home, successively 
marked the sway of Louis XV. The political personages of those 
times were the favourites of the Pompadours and the du Barrys. 
But for the intellectual action of the nation itself, a more insignifi- 
cant and disgraceful reign could not be found in the annals of 
France. 

"Without determining the merits or demerits of this philosophy, 
it cannot but be considered as the completion of a great intellectual 
movement, in progress since the reformation. Almost every century 
is characterized by a spirit of agitation, indicating an advance in the 
human mind with regard to the intellectual or to the social condition 
of man. Thus, during the sixteenth century, France was convulsed 
by the great catholic league • which, whilst opposing heresy, was in 
reality a protest against power, and in favour* of the national insti- 
tutions. In this respect it strongly resembled the revolutionary 
spirit of England in the seventeenth century, when religious dissen- 
sions led to the triumph of civil freedom. This struggle was con- 
tinued in France* during the following century, by the political 
intrigues of the Fronde, and the persistency of Jansenism • through 
which forms the decaying nobility and the partisans of intellectual 
freedom vainly opposed the personal tyranny of the monarch. 

10* 



114 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

The philosophy of the eighteenth century took a bolder and more 
certain aim. Instead of making creed the means of attack, it 
attacked creed itself, as the very basis of authority. Philosophy, 
which had previously been linked with religion, now became its 
irreconcilable foe. Ideas replaced creeds and doctrines. The privi- 
leged classes themselves hastened the crisis. Nobles, authors, men 
of science and women of the world, all united in the common task 
of destruction : the whole nation seemed to have gathered up its 
strength in order to bring clown the old and tottering social edifice. 
The revolution was the close of that eventful drama, which had 
been progressing through three centuries, always in spite of the 
persevering opposition of the reigning sovereigns. Moral death and 
fearful ruin seemed the only result of this wide devastation; but 
from, these ruins of feudalism and absolute power sprang forth a 
nation. Before examining the influence which woman possessed 
over this movement we must speak of the philosophy, which was 
one of its most important signs. 

We shall do so as briefly as possible. To the spiritualism of 
Descartes and Leibnitz succeeded the doctrines of Locke, which were 
introduced into France towards the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The soul ceased to occupy the attention of metaphysicians : 
they concluded it to lie beyond their province, and asserted that all 
our ideas and impressions are derived from the senses. Condillac, 
by his admirable clearness, popularized these doctrines. The ease 
with which they were understood, and their correspondence to the 
feelings of the age, rendered them still more universal. Sensation 
was the test to which men submitted faith and morality. The ex- 
istence of God, of the soul, and of a future state, was no longer 
confessed. Some, indeed, still clung to these great principles ; but 
their number was extremely limited. The laxity of morals favoured, 
and perhaps created, this gross materialism. This is more probable 
than the assertion that these doctrines led to the general profligacy. 
Creeds are oftener fashioned according to our actions, than our ac- 
tions are derived from creeds. It was natural that those who only 
lived for voluptuous enjoyments should seek, in a sensual philosophy, 
the justification of their conduct. Literature and philosophy are 
not always the guides of the age in which they flourish. They ex- 
press the feelings of men, but do not sway them exclusively. Like 
constitutional monarchs, they reign but do not govern. Too much 
of unmixed condemnation has therefore been thrown on the French 
philosophers : they only followed the general current, and interpreted 
the opinions of their age } but, because they acted as the organs of 
public feeling, they were assumed to be its leaders. 

Whilst Condillac laid bare the springs of analytic philosophy, 
Helvetius expounded its moral tendencies, in his " De l'Esprit :" a 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 115 

work more famous than read. It is said, that the wish of explain- 
ing to a lady a chapter of Locke, which she did not understand, 
made Helvetius begin this laborious work. His whole life was a 
proof of the power of female opinion. The wish of pleasing wo- 
men and winning the distinction their approbation conferred, first 
drew him from the voluptuous obscurity for which he was naturally 
fitted. After learning how to dance better than the famous Dupre, 
whom he is said to have occasionally replaced at the opera, Helve- 
tius gave himself up to fencing. On beholding Maupertuis sur- 
rounded by a crowd of fashionable ladies in the Tuileries, he re- 
solved to study geometry. Not satisfied with his progress in this 
science, and dazzled by the glory of Voltaire, he wrote a long dull 
poem on happiness. The success of Montesquieu's " Esprit des 
Lois/' acted more powerfully still on his ambition; resigning his 
post of farmer-general, he married, and retired into the country, 
where he spent ten years in writing his philosophical work. In this 
pernicious production, Helvetius embodied all the doctrines of the 
philosophers in whose intercourse he had lived ; reducing to a sys- 
tem the conversations of his friends. This he did with so much 
grossness, that the philosophers themselves were revolted; but, the 
religious party having foolishly persecuted him, his friends were 
compelled to defend him, through mere esprit de corps, and they 
thus gave him a celebrity he would never have enjoyed otherwise. 
Helvetius was disappointed and terrified. He was timid by nature, 
and believing himself surrounded with dangers, he retracted, in the 
most humiliating terms, the doctrines he had professed in his work : 
neither pacifying the devout party nor securing the approbation of 
the philosophers, by this conduct. 

The work of Helvetius was not the worst of its class. La Mettrie 
far surpassed him in the licentiousness and impiety of his produc- 
tions. It was said of him by the atheistical Marquis d'Argens, 
"that he preached the theory of sin with the shamelessness of a 
fool." La Mettrie was bitterly persecuted in France and in Holland, 
but he found a refuge in Berlin, where Frederick II. kept him till 
his death. Schlosser, the German historian, thus speaks of the 
success his productions obtained : — " The works of this dissolute and 
sensual reviler of every serious principle, and of every higher effort, 
which perhaps no one in our times would notice, found a rapid sale 
in that dark age, because he directed his attention to the public, who 
took delight in scandal and sensualhVy. He compiled and mutilated 
the works of other persons, abused Haller and Boerhaave, and filled 
his writings to loathing with the comfortless doctrines of sin ; which 
he announced and propagated with a vehemence approaching to 
madness : notwithstanding all this, they were collected twice after 
his death, and were read with eagerness and curiosity by the higher 



116 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

classes; for, at that time, and on many grounds, such works never 
came into the hands of the lower/'' 

Such facts are deeply significant. To judge of the spirit of an 
age merely by the eminent men it has produced and admired, is, 
generally speaking, to judge erroneously. Genius is of all time, and 
borrows comparatively little evil from its own epoch : that little is 
modified by originality, and softened down by taste. But mediocrity, 
having less resources in itself, is compelled, in order to insure suc- 
cess, to draw largely on the passions and prejudices of contemporary 
readers. If we wish to see how far these feelings may be carried ; 
into what excesses they may lead a commonplace mind — which is 
always the best representative of a certain epoch ; for genius is by 
its nature exceptional — it is only necessary to open some now for- 
gotten but then admired production. It is thus in every age j and 
thus it was in the eighteenth century. Never was second-rate litera- 
ture so licentious and debased, because never perhaps was the higher 
literature less poetical and noble. According to the testimony of 
an author not suspected of severity, Colle and Crebillon the younger 
were chaste writers, in comparison with most of the novelists of the 
times. The works of these novelists were, however, read and 
admired ; for, whilst they ministered to a corrupt taste, they did not 
fail to assume the philosophic tone which ensured their success, and 
then pervaded everything : in this case a revolting union. The evil 
of such productions does not rest wholly with the philosophers. The 
different classes of society were then all equally degraded and cor- 
rupt. The bourgeois and the nobles, the philosophers and their 
antagonists, all shared in the general laxity of morals of the age. 
It was not, indeed, by austerity that the philosophers sought to pro- 
pagate their doctrines. Christianity had established the spiritual 
equality of man, by calling all to share in a glorious immortality; 
the philosophers of the eighteenth century founded the same equality 
on the degradations of humanity. All were equal, because all were 
equally corrupt. 

It is sad to confess, but it is nevertheless true, that women did 
little to purify society from this general degradation. They shared 
in it, and may almost be said to have made it worse,. since they 
authorized it by their example. A few women, indeed, were to be 
found, even amongst the aristocracy, who calmly adhered to the 
simple virtues of Christianity, in spite of all the philosophical argu- 
ments to the contrary; but they lived unheeded, and passed away 
forgotten. None but the brilliant friends of the philosophers could 
hope for that reputation of talent and wit which was then the 
universal object of female envy. 

But who, it will perhaps be asked, were those philosophers ? How 
came they to exercise so much power ? The philosophers were dis- 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 117 

solute financiers who gave dinners to men of letters ; they were 
writers with or without talent, who had attacked morals and reve- 
lation. Amateurs who had nothing better to do were philosophers. 
Women, bishops, courtiers, and ministers, philosophized like the 
rest. Philosophy, in short, had become the spirit of the nation; 
and in this lay the secret of its power. Everything betrayed the 
inroads it had made. The word Nature had superseded the holy 
name of G-od ; priests in the pulpit spoke not of Jesus Christ, but 
of "the Legislator of the Christians/' Men and women of rank 
attacked the privileges of their order, and spoke contemptuously, of 
the middle class, to which they owed their wealth and power. The 
nobles still possessed that false honour which consists in never 
shrinking from danger, and never allowing an insult to pass unre- 
venged ; but this feeling was one they had always considered exclu- 
sively their own, and they now rashly endeavoured to destroy the 
religious morality which even their own haughty code granted to 
the sons of the serfs. 

Many of the philosophers were, doubtless, better than the prin- 
ciples they professed ; and if they too often considered pleasure the 
great end of man, yet they certainly gave the name of pleasure to 
what every creed calls virtue. But when doctrines or institutions 
are concerned, nothing should be considered so much as the principle 
on which they are based ; for it is that alone which can be really 
said to survive. The philosophers did not trouble themselves with 
such considerations. Intoxicated by the general applause, they 
assumed a vain and arrogant tone. Their scepticism being scarcely 
contradicted, had soon all the intolerance which naturally belongs to 
fashion. The extravagant praises of Frederick of Prussia and of the 
Empress Catherine, raised their vanity still more. Frederick, in- 
deed, soon quarrelled with his proteges, and showed them that, in 
reality, he had no wish to place power and intellect on a level ) but 
the mischief was done, and there were few things in heaven or earth 
which escaped the philosophic sway. The most modest contented 
themselves with teaching monarchs their high duties through means 

D CO 

of dull philosophical romances, like Marmontel's Belisaire. Instead 
of considering themselves the creatures of the age, they candidly 
thought they had called into existence the very feelings which 
they themselves obeyed, and without which they would never have 
been known, save as literary men of little originality and ordinary 
talents. The high esteem in which they were held by the ladies 
who ruled over the Parisian world, and who would have thought 
their societies incomplete without the presence of at least one philo- 
sopher, heightened this feeling. They began to respect their own 
inspirations, and to consider all opposition to them as the result of 
fanaticism and tyranny. They mistook the selfish human wish of 



118 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

governing despotically for a holy zeal in the cause of humanity; and 
few mistakes are so fatal as those into which men fall with regard 
to their real motives of action. 

The leaders of this party were often more moderate and clear- 
sighted than their disciples, whose imprudence they sought to re- 
press; but such attempts were effectually checked by the murmurs 
they created. The philosophic chiefs naturally relinquished a re- 
pressive course foreign to their own inclinations, and which could 
only endanger their popularity. The control which government 
sought to exercise was useless : it was often insincere. Every one 
confessed the existence of radical evils ; a few threw the whole blame 
on the philosophers, and thought to cure the disease by checking its 
external symptoms. But government had actually no arms with 
which to contend against opponents supported by public opinion. 
It was natural that society should favour doctrines which taught 
people to despise a state of things it was no longer possible to re- 
spect. 

It was this consciousness of their strength which rendered the 
philosophers so intolerant. No opinions but those they professed 
could obtain a fair hearing. Their social tyranny was such that 
many men of talent — but not gifted with sufficient independence of 
mind — did not dare to acknowledge their religious sentiments, and 
professed an atheistical creed foreign to their real belief. Naigeon, 
the atheist, was called by his own friends " Y Athee inquisiteur," on 
account of his # excessive intolerance. The moderate Duclos proposed 
to extirpate Protestantism, which he considered a political evil, by 
depriving the Protestants of their civil rights, and interdicting the 
public exercise of their worship. He seemed to consider this a 
humane and liberal suggestion. It is unjust to lay to the clergy and 
the Jesuits the sole odium of the intolerance which then prevailed. 
Intolerance is an attribute of the human mind, and not of any par- 
ticular creed or opinion. 

The great facility with which the name of philosopher was ac- 
quired increased the tribe. Yanity made more proselytes than con- 
viction. The heathen philosophers were men who distinguished 
themselves from the crowd either by their doctrines or by their 
mode of life ; the French philosophers, on the contrary, had nothing 
so peculiar as their similarity to the world with which they lived, 
and whose opinions and prejudices they fully adopted. The influ- 
ence which women exercised over the doctrines of the philosophers, 
was more in the form which those doctrines took than in their sub- 
stance. Women have feelings, but seldom opinions of their own. 
To the philosojohy of the eighteenth century, they imparted some of 
their own thoughtless frivolousness, with a passion and enthusiasm, 
and consequently an impulsive power, it could not have possessed 



THE PHILOSOPHERS. 119 

otherwise. No great movement, intellectual or political, in which 
the women did not share, could then have succeeded in France. By 
enlisting the sympathies of these powerful auxiliaries in their cause, 
the philosophers knew that they insured ultimate success; inclina- 
tion and policy led them to adopt the complaisant and subservient 
tone with which they have been so bitterly reproached. The women 
of these times also greatly contributed to widen that separation be- 
tween the court and Parisian society which had begun under the 
ministry of Fleury. 

This was especially apparent in the altered tone of the stage. 
Under Louis XIV. the decisions of the court in theatrical matters 
preceded those of the public. The reverse was the case in the 
eighteenth century, when the public gave a decidedly democratic 
direction to the popular plays. This philosophic and declamatory 
tone was modified by female influence : the women inspired the 
desire of something more true and more touching than could be 
afforded by the stately misfortunes of royal sufferers. The senti- 
mental comedy, u Comedie larmoyante," as its antagonists named it, 
succeeded to the royal tragedy of Louis XIV. A woman was the 
first who discovered this change in the taste of the public. Made- 
moiselle Quinault, one of the popular actresses of the day, and a 
woman of great originality and talent, advised Voltaire to create a 
mixed sort of drama. He laughed at her advice; which was, how- 
ever, followed by La Chaussee. The great success his sentimental 
comedies obtained, showed the correctness of Mademoiselle Quinault's 
surmise. Voltaire endeavoured to eclipse him, but failed in the 
attempt : a fact which proves how very far he was from leading the 
taste of the age. 

The increasing power of women was chiefly displayed by the 
patronage they extended towards the philosophers who frequented 
their bureaux d'esprits. They were not, however, the only supports 
of the philosophic party. M. de la Popeliniere, and the farmer- 
general, Le Pelletier, received the artists and literary men of the 
times. Helvetius and D'Holbach, themselves philosophers, for- 
warded their cause, and acquired some celebrity — apart from their 
own personal merits — by giving costly entertainments to their 
friends. Helvetius gave dinners because he wanted ideas : he never 
spoke himself, or he at least spoke very little; his object was to 
create discussions in which he took no share. He listened to his 
guests, and noted in his mind all the striking and original remarks 
uttered in the heat of the moment. The dinners of Helvetius 
proved attractive from the variety of eminent persons who were 
anxious to see the author of "De l'Esprit;" but the want of a pre- 
siding spirit was always sure to be felt. 

The entertainments of the German baron D'Holbach were more 



120 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

interesting. For twenty-five years he drew around him the most 
celebrated atheists of the times, and spent large sums to forward 
their doctrines. Diderot, who converted him to atheism, the impa- 
tient Duclos, Helvetius, Saint-Lambert, Grimm, Marmontel, and, 
for a short time, Rousseau, La Harpe, D'Alembert, Morellet, Ray- 
nal, and the little Abbe Galiani, were successively the chief supports 
of the Epicurean baron's society. The objects of their indiscrimi- 
nate attacks — and they met for no other purpose than to attack — 
were religion and authority. The best means of carrying their aim 
into effect were fully discussed at table, and in the presence of the 
servants; who transmitted their subversive doctrines to the lower 
classes. The so-called philosophers aimed, however, at nothing so 
definite as a revolution ; but they felt that their task was to destroy, 
and accomplished it with fanatic zeal. D'Holbach himself spared 
neither his time nor his money in order to propagate his doctrines. 
His vast learning rendered him no contemptible opponent. No less 
than one hundred and forty-seven anonymous productions of infidel 
tendency are supposed to have been written under his direction, and 
printed at his expense. Voltaire, for persisting to believe in the 
existence of a God, was little respected by this coterie, and those 
who based their faith on its decisions. " C'est un bigot : il est 
deiste," was the petulant exclamation of a lady who had adopted 
D'Holbach' s atheism. But, though openly maintained, atheism was 
not exclusively professed in this circle. Whilst Diderot and his host 
asserted their principles in the most absolute manner, Morellet, 
Rousseau, and a few more, declared themselves theists, and warmly 
defended their opinions. The versatile and unprincipled Abbe Ga- 
liani, showed his skill as an improvisatore by one clay speaking in 
favour of the existence of a Supreme Being, and attacking the same 
principle on their next meeting. With such blasphemous levity 
did these men treat a question so great and so momentous. Dis- 
gusted with the manner in which they professed their doctrines, 
Duclos once impatiently exclaimed — " That band of little impious 
fellows will end by making me go to confession." D'Alembert 
ended by wholly withdrawing from them. 

The influence of this coterie of atheists over the eighteenth cen- 
tury was very great. They succeeded in popularizing their desolat- 
ing doctrines, and in extending the sway of atheism. The power 
of D'Holbach differed, however, very essentially, from that of the 
women of his time : he had to toil assiduously for his popularity ; 
and when, through motives of economy, he reduced his good cheer, 
he had the mortification of being deserted by some of his most in- 
fluential friends. He was indeed, as Galiani very freely and imper- 
tinently observed, the "maitre d'hotel of philosophy." With all 
his learning, he could never rise above commonplace talent ; nor 



MADAME d'ePINAY. 121 

was his personal character very attractive. Vain, capricious, and 
selfish, he once boasted that "though he had lived all his life with 
irritable and indigent men of letters, he could not recollect that he 
had either quarrelled with, or done the smallest service to, any of 
them." The phlegmatic baron was, nevertheless, an honest man; 
but it is easy to conceive that his dinners, however excellent, lacked 
the charm of variety, and that liveliness which was the chief cha- 
racteristic of female society. His dull and learned atheism did not 
suit every taste : the philosophers, accordingly, ate his dinners, but 
preferred the intercourse of a few talented women, who neither as- 
sumed D'Holbach's dogmatic tone nor exercised over the opinions of 
their guests the intolerance to which he was too much prone. 

Besides the three famous bureaux d'esprit, to which we shall 
presently allude, there were several less formal societies, presided 
over by ladies who received their philosophic friends, but who did 
not make this their sole occupation. One of those ladies was a 
clever Englishwoman, Mrs. Edward Montague, who defended the 
genius of Shakspeare against the sarcasms of Yoltaire, and who 
opened her house to the aristocratic and intellectual portion of French 
society. She eclipsed the farmers-general by the magnificence of 
her style of living ) and acquired a considerable degree of import- 
ance by her discussions with Yoltaire in France, and Johnson in 
England. 

Mademoiselle Quinault, the actress, also gathered a little coterie 
of free-thinking noblemen and celebrated authors around her. Her 
friends, with a doubtful sort of flattery, called her " the Ninon of 
the eighteenth century." Her suppers were excellent, and her 
manners very free : a few titled ladies, who could not resist the 
temptation of coming to those suppers, might occasionally be seen 
amongst her guests \ but they avoided acknowledging in public this 
breach of the covenances. 

Voltaire's favourite niece, Madame Denis, an ugly, agreeable 
woman, who wrote tragedies she could never get acted, likewise 
gave a few pleasant suppers to her friends. Voltaire was glad to 
join them, whenever he could escape from the jealous surveillance 
of Madame du Chatelet. 

The society of Madame d'Epinay was still more important. With- 
out being very clever or very handsome, Madame d'Epinay was an 
attractive woman. She never had a regular bureau d'esprit; which 
rendered her house more pleasant than it could otherwise have been. 
She established in her circle a philosophic ease and freedom, au- 
thorized by her secondary position in society. Authors, artists, men 
and women of the world, met there without restraint ; and not for 
the sole and express purpose of philosophising and uttering clever 
paradoxes. Her society, indeed, was neither brilliant nor renowned ; 
11 



122 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

perhaps it was not very amusing, for Madame d'Epinay had -little 
of what is called wit, and still less originality; but it was at least 
free and natural. Whilst they were in her house, her guests con- 
sented to doff that philosophic armour, through which posterity has 
found it so difficult to discern their real features. Madame d'Epinay 
abstained from exercising over her friends a control for which she 
was little adapted. She possessed judgment and penetration ; but 
she had no imagination, no originality, and very little taste. She 
derived pleasure from the intercourse of clever people, but she could 
not afford them much entertainment herself: her conversation was 
cold and somewhat commonplace j she yielded almost instinctively 
to the opinions of those in whose intimacy she lived ; she was caustic 
with Grimm, and sentimental with Rousseau : she would not have 
been either one or the other, if left to her own impulses. The same 
traits characterized her writings ; for, though gifted with very little 
imagination, Madame d'Epinay was always engaged in some literary 
labour. Whenever she attempted high composition she failed; but 
her epistolary style was good, and she excelled in easy gossiping 
narrative. It was less design than accident which procured Madame 
d'Epinay her philosophic connections. Her lover, Francceil, was 
one of the early patrons of J. J. Rousseau, whom he introduced to 
her; and Rousseau, in his turn, made her become acquainted with 
Diderot, D'Holbaeh, and Grimm. M. d'Epinay, a wealthy and 
dissolute financier, had, as usual, nothing to do with the connections 
of his wife. But he, at least, may be said to have deserved his 
fate. Diderot, with equal truth and severity, observed of him, 
"that he had squandered two millions without uttering one criticism 
or performing one good action. " 

Madame d'Epinay seems to have been naturally inclined to virtue, 
but the example of her husband had a pernicious influence on her 
character. Disgusted with the vices of M. d'Epinay, she formed an 
attachment for M. de Francceil, with whose friends she was soon on 
intimate terms. The social position of Madame d'Epinay not being 
very high, she had more external freedom than was enjoyed by the 
ladies of rank. Her own conduct, and the profligacy of her husband, 
rendered her still more independent of the opinion of the world. 
She made, therefore, no scruple of receiving men whom the upper 
circles still eschewed, and was soon intimate with all the leaders of 
the philosophic sect. Diderot, however, she could not secure; he 
was always ill at ease in the polite world. Too great a portion of 
his life had been spent in very questionable society for him to ac- 
quire the aristocratic elegance which distinguished Voltaire. This 
was, perhaps, why, with all his fervid eloquence, Diderot often failed 
in producing the effect which might have been anticipated from his 
great talents. His mind was too vast, and his manner too vehement, 



MADAME D'EPINAY. 123 

for the artificial society in which he was compelled to move. His 
friends said that he should have been a Grecian philosopher, teach- 
ing his disciples in the gardens of Acaclemia. Diderot himself 
thought so, and was proud of the appellation of Socrates-Diderot, 
even whilst he ministered, with licentious productions, to the de- 
praved taste of the age. He presented the not uncommon phenome- 
non of a man whose mind was superior to his writings; thus his 
works are no longer read, whilst his name still stands foremost 
amongst the names of that period. 

It was the caustic German, Grimm, the successor of Francoeil in 
Madaine d'Epinay's affections, who held the most conspicuous place 
in her circle ; where his despotic disposition, and his habit of cover- 
ing his face with a coating of red and white paint, caused him to be 
familiarly named " Tyran le Blanc." The lively little Abbe Galiani 
also stood high in Madame d'Epinay's good graces. They wrote 
one another clever letters, full of smart savings, and destined to be 
inserted in Grimm's correspondence with his German patron. How 
far, moreover, these letters may be considered confidential, and relied 
upon as such, can be seen by Madame d'Epinay's remark, in answer 
to an observation of Galiani's : u It is insupportable of you to re- 
mind me that our correspondence will be printed after our death. / 
knew it, but had forgotten all about it. Immortality terrifies me 
dreadfully." What a pity that all the correspondences of those 
times bear traces of the same knowledge; that letters were not then 
written off merely for the look of a friend, but were leisurely indited 
with an eye to posterity, and a very natural wish of appearing to 
advantage before this severe and impartial judge! 

A few foreigners of distinction, the most eminent of whom was 
Hume, also made their appearance in the circle of Madame d'Epinay. 
Hume then enjoyed in the Parisian circles so high a degree of repu- 
tation, that a lady was disgraced at court for having asked who and 
what he was. He was a philosopher and an Englishman; he ap- 
peared at a period when French society, and the ladies who presided 
over it, felt the want of some attractive novelty ; it was natural that 
Hume should be exalted as a prodigy, and eagerly sought as such 
in every fashionable circle. He was at first thought admirably 
adapted to enact his part in the frivolous amusements then in fashion ; 
but, though once placed in the character of a sultan between two of 
the prettiest women of the day, the English philosopher, after much 
rumination and repeatedly striking his breast, found nothing better 
to say, during a whole quarter of an hour, than: " Eh bien! mes 
demoiselles. Eh Lien I cons voiid done. Eh lieu ! vous roil a . . 
volts voiid ivi." Hume's reputation was fortunately too well esta- 
blished to suffer from what would have ruined another man. He 
was still cajoled and caressed in every Parisian circle; where he re- 



124 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ceived, with philosophic phlegm and gravity, the lavish praise of his 
admirers. Madame d'Epinay, without admiring exclusively the 
" gros and grand historiographe d' Angletcrre," and, whilst complain- 
ing that his conduct lowered the philosophic dignity, was not sorry 
to display him to her friends. 

Many individuals of secondary note also adorned her circle ; the 
frank Duclos and the elegant Saint-Lambert were amongst her inti- 
mate friends, as well as an obscure and needy author, whom one of 
her female acquaintances cavalierly described as " a poor fellow, as 
poor as Job, a sort of dependant on Madame Dupin, FrancceiFs 
mother, but full of wit and vanity." This individual was no other 
than a M. J. J. Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, the scarcely known 
author of a comedy entitled " L'Engagement Temeraire/' and which 
had been acted by Madame d'Epinay and her friends, in her coun- 
try-house. 

This was not the first appearance which the still obscure Rousseau 
had made in Parisian society. Whilst he was devoting his whole 
attention to music, he was seen for a while in the salons of Madame 
de la Popeliniere, to whom he submitted his opera of the " Muses 
Galantes." Madame de la Popeliniere was then wholly in favour 
of the composer Ranieau. She took little heed of the awkward and 
independent Genevese, but criticized the " Muses Galantes" very 
bitterly, and gave their author several tokens of her ill-will. Rous- 
seau was as unsuccessful in other quarters, until his essay on Civil- 
ization revealed his genius to the world : henceforth he was univer- 
sally courted and admired ; but by remaining so long beyond the 
pale of what was called elegant society, he had learned to know and 
despise its judgments : he too might have exclaimed, — 

"I have not loved the world, nor the world me." 

The destiny of Rousseau seemed to mark him out for the apostle 
of democracy. Exposed as a plebeian to all the proud man's con- 
tumely; humbled and oppressed when he mingled with the world; 
scorned and forgotten when he retired to solitude, the proud and 
irritable genius garnered up in his heart, through years of unheeded 
sufferings, that unconquerable hatred of society which he afterwards 
expressed with an eloquence so bitter and so deep. When in the 
noonday of his fame he was called forth from his obscurity, he 
looked upon the world, which had so long excluded him from its 
precincts, with mingled disdain and abhorrence; and, turning away, 
he resumed once more that deep and incessant self-communion, the 
bliss and misery of his whole life. Rousseau was not immaculate ; 
but at least he felt in his soul a thirst for an ideal excellence of 
which he met no trace elsewhere. He fell into the common error 
of mistaking his aspirations for virtues. He has been called vain, 



ROUSSEAU. 125 

and there are strange traces of self-idolatry throughout the whole of 
his err: : himself that Rousseau worshipped, or 

the £Ood he believed he saw in his own heart ? If he was selfish 
and vain, he was not exclusively such; else, whence came the pas- 
sion and fervour of his doctrines, the magic eloquence and tenderness 
of his style, which could rouse even the whole mass of a corrupt 
and decaying society ? When did a heart, unmoved itself, stir 
others so deeply ? 

It was natural that Rousseau should not sympathize with the 
philosophers. They only aimed at destruction j he wished to destroy 
in order to create anew : their inspirations were all derived from the 
external and social world, which they obeyed ) his were essentially 
internal and independent. Thus, whilst Voltaire owed his fame to 
the pliancy with which he yielded to the feelings of the age, Rous- 
seau won his by the vehemence with which he attacked those feel- 
ings. Society avenged itself personally upon him, even whilst it 
admired and exalted his genius ; but it had not sufficient faith in its 
own vitality to feel injured. All knew that a great social change 
was at hand, and hailed the prophetic voice by which it was an- 
nounced. 

Rousseau had not yet wholly broken with the world when he 
contracted for Madame d'Epinay a friendship, which, though very 
ardent at first, was as unfortunate as his other attachments. It is 
well known that Rousseau's unhappy temper would never let him 
agree long with his friends of either sex. He passionately loved 
the society of women — it was to his intercourse with them that 
Diderot partly ascribed the grace and fervour of his style — but he 
did little to conciliate their favour; though he knew, from the first, 
"that nothing could be done in Paris without the aid of women/' 
He absolutely refused to submit to the patronizing tone they were in 
the habit of using towards the philosophers : nor were his quarrels 
with his fair friends marked by much amenity of tone or feeling on 
his part. His connection with 3Iadame d'Epinay was particularly 
unfortunate. The passionate love he expressed for nature and soli- 
tude induced Madame d'Epinay, in the first enthusiasm of her friend- 
ship, to fit him up a romantic little hermitage at 3Iontmorency, and 
in the neighbourhood of her own residence. Rousseau was extremely 
unhappy in this retreat ; he complained that his friends deserted him, 
and accused G-rimm of seeking to deprive him of the friendship of 
Diderot, D'Holbach, and 3Iadame d'Epinay. To add to his misfor- 
tunes, he fell desperately in love with Madame d'Houdetot, Madame 
d'Epinay' s sister-in-law, and the mistress of Saint-Lambert; whom 
his adventure with Madame du Chatelet had brought into notice in 
Parisian society. Rousseau was then composing his "Xouvelle 
Heloise," and he read the letters, as he finished them, to Madame 

11* 



126 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

d'Epinay and Madame d'Houdetot. Though this latter lady was, 
as Rousseau avers, the only woman he ever loved, she could boast of 
little beauty : she squinted, and was marked with the smallpox. But 
she was gay, frank, and thoughtless, and, according to all accounts, 
witty and very charming : her friends called her the "parfaite Julie. " 
Rousseau's love was hopeless; for Madame d'Houdetot was ardently 
attached to Saint-Lambert, to whom she always remained constant. 
Her husband, as usual, raised no obstacle to her passion : he and 
Saint-Lambert agreed very well until their old age, when they be- 
came extremely jealous of one another, and led Madame d'Houdetot 
a very uneasy life. 

Rousseau was soon thoroughly miserable in his hermitage : he 
accused Diderot of deserting him, and Madame d'Epinay of being in 
a league with his enemies. After vainly attempting to sow division 
between Madame d'Houdetot and Saint-Lambert, he ended by turning 
on Madame d'Epinay with a singular degree of acrimony. They 
parted with mutual feelings of ill-will; and this disagreement was 
the origin of Rousseau's long quarrel with the whole philosophic 
party. For some time, Paris talked of nothing else. Rousseau's 
discussions with Diderot were especially the theme of conversation. 
" This is really incredible," exclaimed M. de Castries : " one can 
hear of nothing but those people, who have no position, no house of 
their own, and who actually live in garrets." In spite of D'Holbach's 
warning, Hume took Rousseau's part, and brought him to EDgland. 
Rousseau, more gloomy and misanthropic than ever, soon accused his 
host of conspiring against his peace and honour, and indulged in 
such bitter personalities, that Hume, exasperated, wrote off to 
D'Holbach — " You were right : Rousseau is a monster." This letter 
was publicly read by D'Holbach, and brought down much opprobrium 
on Rousseau. Walpole, who was then in Paris, thought this a fit 
opportunity to address to Rousseau a very impertinent and insulting 
letter, in which he assumed the name of Frederick of Prussia. 
Madame du Deffand was asserted to have revised this letter for her 
friend. Rousseau resented this very much. One of his most bitter 
complaints against Hume and Walpole was, that they had drawn all 
the women away from him ; and this circumstance, which was correct 
in the main, contributed no little to the social persecutions Rousseau 
henceforth endured. 

After his quarrel with Madame d'Epinay, Rousseau appeared 
indeed to have broken entirelv with the Parisian world, and the 
ladies who ruled over it. Madame d'Epinay, who was wholly 
influenced by Grimm, and whom Rousseau's caprices had heartily 
wearied, did not regret the loss of her former friend : it is, however, 
to her connection with him that she owed the interest attached to 
her name, and the attention she excited in her own times. 



GENERAL ASPECT OF SOCIETY. 127 

When Rousseau had left the hermitage, and when his quarrel 
with her was no longer thought of, Madame d'Epinay found herself 
comparatively forgotten. In her latter days, she wrote works on 
education, and became the rival of Madame de Genlis ; but her 
talent always remained essentially commonplace. 

Rousseau speaks of her with singular bitterness, and evidently 
with injustice. She was kind-hearted, and would have remained 
his friend had he allowed her to do so. But to agree with any one 
was not his destiny, or rather, in his nature ; he accused Madame 
d'Epinay of being in a league against him with the philosophers, 
and left her in order to brood over his imaginary wrongs : "a lonely 
man : his life a long soliloquy !"* 



CHAPTER V. 

General aspect of society — -Power of woman — Madame du Deffand. 

We have already stated, that the society of Madame d'Epinay 
was secondary in importance to the bureaux d' esprit so celebrated 
in the history of the eighteenth century. Three of those assem- 
blies — and the three most important — were then presided over by 
Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and Madame 
Geoffrin. The first of these ladies was celebrated for her caustic 
wit ; Mademoiselle de Lespinasse for the charms of her conversation ; 
and Madame Geoffrin for her active benevolence. 

The existence of these literary societies is a characteristic feature 
of the times. Montesquieu, covertly alluding to their influence, 
satirically observes, that a nation where women give the prevailing 
tone must necessarily be talkative. Then, however, it was the men 
who talked, and the women who listened. The men talked because 
they could do little else; women gave the prevailing tone, because 
men of all classes were partly compelled, and partly willing, to 
gather around them. The nobles being excluded from politics — in 
which none but the ministers and their creatures could interfere — 
exercising no control, either as individuals or as a body, naturally 
gave themselves up to the pleasures of society. Their political 
insignificance thus increased the power and importance of women. 

The society of women was also sought by authors and scientific 
men, because there was no other freedom than the social freedom 

* Carlyle. 



128 WOMAN IN TRANCE. 

protected by them. Those opinions which, if published openly, 
would have drawn down persecution on those men by whom they 
were asserted, could be professed without fear in a drawing-room. 
The individuals who, nevertheless, ventured on the publication of 
these principles, were not the less anxious for this to appear in the 
bureaux d r esprit. They were animated by that stirring and com- 
municative impulse which characterizes epochs of intellectual action. 
Though the philosophers overrated the value of their labours — since 
they destroyed, where it was their duty to investigate, and, in the 
department of science excepted, left nothing save ruins behind them 
— a great change was, nevertheless, effected in their own opinions, 
and in those of their contemporaries. They all cast away the old 
creeds and institutions of society. Such workings do not pass 
silently in the human mind : whether they lead to good or to evil, 
the first irresistible impulse of man is to impart them to other 
human beings. 

To this powerful motive for courting female society may be added 
the consciousness that the women, who then presided over literary 
circles, not only named whom they liked to the academy, but dis- 
pensed as they chose influence and reputation. Thomas, the author, 
suffered in his fame for not having known how to conciliate the 
women of his time. The indolence of the upper classes, the general 
want of freedom, and the vanity and ambition of authors, thus laid 
the basis of the power of women — a power then carried to an extent 
now scarcely suspected. 

It is both ludicrous and contemptible to read, in contemporary 
memoirs, of the arts then employed to secure the favour of those 
despotic rulers of society. Even men of high rank, like the Prince 
of Conde, felt convinced that nothing could be effected without the 
assistance of women ; and, acknowledging only one method of 
securing this assistance, professed themselves the admirers of every 
handsome and clever woman who seemed likely to further their 
views. Those whose personal disadvantages did not allow them to 
act this part, were satisfied with the more humble rank of confiden- 
tial friend. Almost every woman of fashion had in her train one 
of these confidants, who listened to the history of her love affairs, 
kindly supposed them to be purely platonic, and whose task it was 
to administer consolation and advice. During the seventeenth cen- 
tury, weak-minded women were notorious for their partiality towards 
their religious directors. But, " autre temps, autre mceurs," and 
the descendants of the devotees of Louis XIV. now gave the em- 
pire, formerly usurped under the name of religion, to a very differ- 
ent feeling. Most of these singular directeurs owed their success 
in life to the zeal of their female friends : a fact which served to 
increase the species. 



POWER OF WOMEN. 129 

This political insignificance of the men, placing the women on a 
level with them, also rendered the intercourse of the two sexes more 
polished and agreeable. They could speak on the same subjects, 
since there were no political discussions from which the women 
were to be excluded. Conversation was soon carried to the height 
of an art, though it was ever marked by the most elegant simpli- 
city. It not only acquired a style, but also became remarkable for 
its perspicuity and concision. The necessity under which men la- 
boured of explaining to the women with whom they conversed, mat- 
ters their ignorance prevented them from understanding, made them 
acquire a clearness and facility they often transferred to their writ- 
ings. That excessive polish which is both the beauty and the defect 
of the French language, is to be attributed to female influence. 
Women necessarily perfect the teste of a nation, and the wish of 
pleasing them introduces refinement and elegance. The assemblies 
over which they then presided were not free, however, from great 
disadvantages. One of their most serious evils was, that for the 
calm meditation of former writers they substituted the habit of 
quick and light decisions peculiar to conversation. Mingled pre- 
sumption and frivolousness thus became one of the characteristics 
of the times. 

It would be erroneous to conclude, from what has been said of 
the general profligacy which then prevailed, that the conversation 
of men and women who owned few moral restraints, was marked 
by indelicacy. Never, on the contrary, was conversation more free 
from this blemish, and even from scandal. One of the female ora- 
cles of those days had pronounced "que cela gatait le ton d'une 
femme," and she was in the right : scandal is essentially vulgar. 
Thus, the careless remark that M. un tel had Madame une telle was 
the only knowledge a stranger could obtain of an illicit connection 
between persons who were notoriously on the most intimate terms. 
The least open freedom on the part of those persons would have 
excluded them for ever from society. Sin was tolerated, but the 
indecencies of sin were rigidly forbidden. 

It is difficult to imagine that a society more polite, elegant, and 
intellectual than that of the eighteenth century should ever have 
existed; and this for the obvious reason that universal attention 
was directed towards the acquisition of those talents necessary to 
appear to advantage in society, as well as to render it more per- 
fect and attractive. Many men and women of high talents sought 
not to establish their fame on anything like a durable basis : the 
great business of life was then to talk well, with grace, wit, and 
vivacity; everything else was sacrificed to the possession of this 
perishable accomplishment. Thus, the remarkable women of those 
times are now known only by hearsay; they left nothing by which 



130 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

they can be judged fairly: their productions, when they did write, 
do not come up to the idea formed of their talents. Having early 
sought to shine chiefly in conversation, they were no longer fitted 
for that peculiar train of thought necessary to literary composition. 
It is by their letters alone that we can now conceive the real tone 
of their minds. But for the correspondence of Madame du Deffand, 
what idea could we have of her keen and polished satire, and of 
that selfishness and ennui which literally consumed her existence. 
Were it not for the love letters of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, first 
given to the public through the indiscretion of a friend, it would be 
impossible to understand correctly the originality and passionate 
fervour which distinguished this unhappy woman. 

It is, also, a remarkable and interesting fact, that the authoresses 
of those times were very commonplace women, with little influ- 
ence. Madame de Genlis had great talent, and a wonderful indus- 
try, but she cannot, however, be said to have risen higher than this. 
Madame de Staal, who had genius, does not belong to the brilliant 
portion of the eighteenth century. She appeared when the spirit 
of the Revolution was already effacing the last vestiges of that self- 
ish and corrupt society. 

To judge of the intellect and influence of the women of those 
times, we must therefore consider them in their social relations, and 
often in their private affections. To judge of them otherwise 
would be to fall into inevitable errors. The personal characters of 
the three ladies whom we have mentioned as holding the bureaux 
d' esprit frequented by the whole philosophic tribe, will, even with- 
out straining after imaginary analogies, represent a few of the very 
distinct feelings which then divided French society. The polite, 
profligate, and sceptical noblesse naturally gathered around Madame 
du Deffand, a witty and aristocratic woman; Mademoiselle de Le- 
spinasse, a social outcast by her illegitimate birth, and gifted with 
an ardent and enthusiastic mind, sympathized with the political re- 
formers of the day; the worldly wise and moderate ones of the 
philosophic party met at the house of Madame Geoffrin, the quiet 
and prudent bourgeoise, who wished to reconcile her religious feel- 
ings with the patronage of professed sceptics. The society of 
Madame du Deffand is the first that must occupy our attention. 

Frank without candour, and impetuous without either passions or 
feeling; full of wit and sound judgment in her mode of thinking, 
but extravagant and often ridiculous in her conduct; openly selfish, 
and yet capable of friendship : such was Madame du Deffand. Du- 
ring her youth, she was known for her beauty, vivacity, and equivo- 
cal conduct. As age drew on, her charms vanished, and she became 
blind, ill-tempered, and ennuyee. She sought for a time a refuge 
in devotion, but having naturally little turn that way, she opened a 



MADAME DU DEFFAND. 131 

bureau d' esprit to the philosophers. Neither their society nor her 
own wit — which, after that of Voltaire and Piron, was perhaps the 
keenest of the age — could preserve her, however, from the incessant 
ennui that consumed her declining years. 

Marie Vichy de Chain rond was born towards the close of the 
seventeenth century. In the convent where she was brought up, 
and where she received an excellent education, she early distin- 
guished herself for a tone- of- raillery on religious matters, which 
alarmed the nuns. They called in Massillon to talk to her; but the 
good and amiable bishop was too much delighted with the grace and 
frankness of the young girl to be very severe. " Elle est char- 
mante," was his only reproof. At the age of , twenty-two, Made- 
moiselle de Vichy was married to the Marquis du Deffand, from 
whom her intrigues soon caused her to separate. Eyes remarkable 
for their beauty and brilliancy, a pleasant smile, and a countenance 
full of piquancy and expression, were the chief personal attractions 
of the witty young marchioness. Amongst her numerous lovers, 
were the regent, whom she fascinated for a whole fortnight; a M. 
de Form on t, much esteemed by Voltaire; President Henault, and 
Pont de Veyle, the adopted brother of Mademoiselle Aisse. The 
latter two remained constant to her until their dotage, and were sup- 
posed to stand equally well in her favour. Constancy in love was 
not one of Madame du Deffand' s virtues. 

Finding herself heartfree at one epoch of her life, she resolved to 
effect a reconciliation with her husband. She spared no seductions 
to win him back, but she had no sooner effected her object than the 
return of a lover, by whom she had been abandoned, made her re- 
pent her success. Not knowing how to get rid of M. du Deffand, 
she assumed so melancholy and woe-begone an aspect whenever he 
was present, that the poor man was glad to leave her once more. 
Her lover, who had persuaded her to act this part merely out of 
pique, now left her in his turn ; and, as the details of the adventure 
were known over all Paris on the following day, the fickle Madame 
du Deffand became the scorn of the whole town : blamed and for- 
saken by her most intimate friends, and obliged to associate with 
such women as Madame de Prie and Madame de Parabere. 

After the failure of the Cellamare conspiracy, Madame du Deffand 
was restored to something like consideration by the friendship of 
Madame clu Maine, who fully appreciated her keen lively wit. It 
was probably at the polished court of this princess, and in the inti- 
macy of Madame de Staal, that Madame du Deffand acquired the 
exquisite style which afterwards characterized her writings. She 
was also indebted for this accomplishment to her own great care in 
writing. During the earlier portion of her life, she never sent a 
letter without having first written it three or four times over : an- 



132 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

other fact which proves how erroneous is the impression that the 
epistolary remains of those times were spontaneous effusions. 

With both Madame du Maine and Madame de Staal, Madame du 
Deffand was a great favourite, as we can see from the lively and 
amusing letters addressed to her by the companion of the duchess. 
Her degree of favour was, however, as variable as the temper of 
the capricious princess, according to the testimony of Madame de 
Staal, who thus writes to her friend : — " I read your letter before 
yesterday to her highness. She was in a fit of fear produced by the 
thunder. This did not tend to set off the polite things you said. I 
shall take care another time not to expose you to stormy weather. 
We were joyful for the last few days; now the rain is come again. 
Our ideas, which had become serene and pleasant, will resume all 
their gloom. Add to this, that for two days our princess has had a 
cold, accompanied with fever; notwithstanding which, with the 
abominable weather, the ceaseless promenade is not discontinued. 
Verily Providence seems to provide princes with bodies suited to all 
their fancies ; they could never otherwise reach the age of reason." 

The restlessness which induced Madame du Maine to pursue her 
out-cloor pleasures with as much zeal as if wind and rain did not 
exist, led her to surround herself by all the visitors she could pro- 
cure: quantity far more than quality seems to have been her object. 
She had made Madame du Deffand promise that she would spend 
some time at Sceaux, where an apartment was kept for her. But 
then Madame du Deffand was notoriously inconstant : if she broke 
her word, the apartment remained vacant, and a visitor — no matter 
whom — was irreparably lost to Madame du Maine. Madame de 
Staal, who had learned to read her princely mistress thoroughly, 
intimated as much to Madame du Deffand. 

"The desire of being surrounded increases daily. I foresee that 
if you keep an apartment without occupying it there will be great 
regret for the loss you will cause, no matter what that loss may be. 
The great become so transparent that we can see the light through. 
It is an admirable study to contemplate them : I know nothing that 
brings us back more surely to philosophy." 

The daughter of the regent, Mademoiselle de Valois, formerly 
mistress of Richelieu, now duchess of Modena, came to Paris about 
this time. Madame du Deffand, who had known her in her youth, 
paid her a visit. On learning this, Madame du Maine, who would 
probably not have shed a tear at Madame du Deffand' s death, man- 
ifested the greatest vexation and grief. 

"Nothing," wrote Madame de Staal ; "can equal the surprise and 
sorrow experienced on learning that you had been to see the Duchess 
of Modena. An impassioned and jealous lover bears the most sus- 
picious steps more patiently than this was endured from you. You 



MADAME DU DEFFAND. 133 

are going to devote yourself there, to abandon all else. One was 
then reserved to this fate, to be the example of every misery; the 
torments that seemed gone are going to be renewed through you; it 
is a most cruel destiny, &c. I said all that could be said to restore 
something like calmness, but I was not heeded. Although I have 
no right to be astonished at anything, this scene nevertheless found 
means to surprise me. Come, I conjure you, and reassure us against 
this alarm." 

It was principally after the death of Madame de Staal and of 
Madame du Maine, that Madame du Deffand, who had hitherto 
spent the greatest portion of her time at Sceaux, began to receive a 
few friends in her apartment in the convent of Saint Joseph, and 
gradually gathered around her a brilliant literary circle, which took 
its tone from her own sceptical and sarcastic spirit. But even before 
this epoch, Montesquieu, D'Alembert, Marmontel, the Marechale de 
Luxembourg, Madame de Staal, the Duchess de la Valliere, Voltaire 
and Madame du Chatelet, the Chevalier d'Aydie, Pont de Veyle, 
Formont, and the President Henault, composed her habitual society. 
We have already stated that, before she assumed the tone of a femme 
philosophe, Madame du Deffand had several times endeavoured to 
become a devotee; but faith seemed antipathetic to her nature. 
Though she was very zealous in her first attempt at reformation, 
she did not scruple to declare, " that she should not honour rouge 
and President Henault — her lover en titre — so far as to discard 
them." The poor President, who feared her temper more than he 
loved her person, was very cavalierly treated by the capricious 
Madame du Deffand. Having ventured, in one of the letters he 
addressed to her during a temporary separation, to express a senti- 
mental regret at her absence, she answered him in a tone of cool 
and cutting sarcasm, which effectually silenced such outpourings of 
his heart for the future. If Madame du Deffand was selfish and 
heartless, she had, at least, the merit of being perfectly frank about 
it. When the celebrated work of Helvetius appeared, several 
persons blamed him in her presence for having made selfishness the 
great motive of human actions. "Bah!" said she, "he has only 
revealed every one's secret." 

Her failure as a devotee did not prevent Madame du Deffand 
from establishing herself in the convent of Saint Joseph, where she 
had a handsome apartment, and gave evening parties and suppers to 
her friends. She had not long been settled there, when she became 
totally blind; and she remained in this melancholy condition for 
the last thirty years of her life. Madame du Deffand bore her 
calamity with great fortitude, but it naturally added to the deep 
ennui which consumed her existence ; and which, with her habitual 
frankuess, she never sought to disguise. " Give me a secret toward 
12 



134 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

off ennui/' she observes, in one of her letters to D'Alenibert, "and 
you will lay me under a greater obligation than if you had bestowed 
on me the philosopher's stone." This feeling was by no means 
peculiar to Madame du Deffand : the published correspondence of 
the circle over which she presided shows that, with all their wit and 
boasted philosophy, her friends found the burden of life intolerably 
heavy. 

The ennui of Madame du Deffand was increased by a singular 
degree of heartlessuess. She had intellectual predilections, but she 
could not love. The gaiety and vivacity of D'Alembert were ac- 
ceptable to her; so were the originality and naivete" of Montescmieu, 
the polished wit of President Henault, or the satire of Voltaire; but 
she had little affection for them as individuals. This did not prevent 
her from being, in many cases, a sincere and zealous friend: though 
friendship was, with her, divested of all its charms. Of her defi- 
ciency in this respect, Madame du Deffand was well aware : when in 
the latter years of her life she became acquainted with Madame de 
Genlis, who was then bringing up, with her own children aud those 
of the Duke of Orleans, a young English girl, named Pamela (after- 
wards the wife of the unhappy Lord Fitzgerald), she asked her, with 
evident surprise, "if she was so fond of that child?" — "I am very 
fond of her indeed!" was the natural reply. "Ah! you are very 
happy," sighed Madame du Deffand, "I never could love anything." 
According, indeed, to the testimony of one who knew her well, " it 
was difficult to have less feeling and more selfishness." 

Those persons who compared Madame du Deffand to Madame de 
Sevigne — and there were many who did so in her own circle — over- 
looked this trait in her character. Her wit was very brilliant, and 
her style no doubt was very pure; but was the great charm of Ma- 
dame de Sevigne merely wit or style? Does not that charm consist 
rather in the admirable pathos and infinite variety with which she 
paints her deep and passionate attachment for her beloved daughter? 
Madame de Sevigne had the keenest enjoyment of life, as is shown 
by the very vehemence with which she deplores every trifling sorrow; 
the life of Madame du Deffand was one of tasteless ennui. If we 
except a few satirical sketches, admirably drawn, what is there in 
all her letters, that should make them be compared with those of 
Madame de Sevigne ? This total insensibility not being accompanied 
by the affectation of a contrary feeling, did not prevent the society 
of Madame du Deffand from being eminently attractive. It was, 
indeed, impossible to resist the fascination of that brilliant, active 
intellect, which yielded to every impression, and passed from one 
subject to another, with ever new freshness and variety. In ail 
matters connected with the everyday world — the only world the 
eighteenth century cared for — Madame du Deffand was inimitable. 



MADAME DU DEFFAND. 135 

The soundness of her judgment, uniled to the poignancy and ori- 
ginality of her language, and that causticity which never forsook her, 
caused her society to be eagerly sought for and highly valued. Her 
freedom from the wish of seeking for effect, and her striking impar- 
tiality, were also very remarkable characteristics of Madame du 
Deffand's mind. At an epoch when simplicity was by no means 
prevalent, she displayed an unbending hatred of everything like 
subtlety and finesse, and unsparingly accused of affectation all the 
thinkers of the day. She had no more sympathy with the declama- 
tory enthusiasm of the philosophers, than with the rigorism of the 
devotees. She disbelieved in the existence of feelings she could 
never experience herself. 

This general indifference prevented Madame du Deffand from 
surrounding herself exclusively with philosophers; consequently the 
society which met at her house was far more easy and polite, and 
more free from vanity and pedantry than it was customary for such 
assemblies to be. 

It was probably this absence of all effort and restraint which 
made the frank and unaffected Montesquieu — who loved those houses 
where, to use his own expression, he could pass with his every-day 
wit — regret with so much sincerity the delightful suppers of the 
Convent of Saint-Joseph. The peculiar pleasure which he found in 
the society of his hostess he thus candidly expressed to the Chevalier 
d'Aydie, "I love this woman with all my heart; she pleases and 
amuses me : it is impossible to feel a moment's ennui in her com- 
pany/' 

The feelings with which Madame du Deffand inspired her friends 
corresponded to the degree of pleasure she afforded them. But 
whilst she imparted amusement to others, she could not always 
receive it herself; and at those suppers, where all the strangers who 
visited Paris eagerly sought to be admitted, the listless countenance 
of the hostess often betrayed the ennui which pursued her even 
there. She did not even choose to disguise that ennui from those 
who unfortunately added to it. One of her friends, remarkable for 
the monotony of his delivery, was boring her one day with a long 
and uninteresting dissertation. "My dear friend/' said she, taking 
advantage of her blindness to feign ignorance, " what tiresome book 
are you reading?" There was nothing, however, which Madame 
du Deffand dreaded so much as solitude, and in general she spared 
no effort to render her house attractive to her visitors. " Let us 
have good cheer," she often said to her cook, " I now want society 
more than ever." "Suppers," she also observed, "were one of the 
four great objects of man in life." Madame clu Deffand did well, 
with all her wit, not to rely too exclusively on its effects. Abste- 



136 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

niiousness was neither her virtue nor that of the sensual philosophers 
with whom she associated. 

The society of Madame du Deffand's was neither literary, like 
Madame de Tencin's, nor artistic, like that of Madame de la 
Popeliniere. It was the society of aristocratic and intellectual indi- 
viduals, who met for common amusement, with a sprinkling of 
philosophers, in order to give some variety to conversation, and also 
because philosophy was the fashion of the day. The most ardent 
members of the philosophic sect had, however, little sympathy with 
the cold-hearted Madame du DefFand. She said herself, in her own 
quiet way, " Je n'ai pas d'atomes aurochans." Diderot came once 
to visit her, eyed her-witty Epicurean friends with contempt, and 
never came again. Freedom and good breeding were the chief 
characteristics of this circle. Within its narrow limits, however, 
Madame du Deffand set up for an arbitrary judge on all questions 
of philosophy or taste. Her correspondence with Voltaire, and the 
high value he set on her opinions, gave her great authority : though 
her decisions were marked by more wit than correctness. Of 
Montesquieu's great work, she observed that it was not L'Esprit 
des Lois, but De TEsprit sur les Lois, — a saying which Voltaire 
thought sufficiently good to make his own and repeat. There was 
more truth in her remark, already quoted, on the work of Helvetius; 
for though it is false that selfishness is the only human incentive, 
the assertion was often correct with respect to the good society of 
that period. 

Notwithstanding her intercourse with the philosophers, Madame 
du Deffand was too egotistical and ennuyee to favour the spirit of 
discussion by which they were animated. She was a sceptic, chiefly 
because the trouble of inquiry was insupportable to her; and also 
because a sceptical indifference was natural to her mind : " Qu'elle 
aimait laisser flotter dans le vague/' as she herself observed. Ma- 
dame du Deffand was, moreover, of opinion that what cannot be 
known to us is evidently unnecessary : a remark which Voltaire 
pronounced admirable. " This is a great truth, Madame; and what 
is better still, a very consoling one." However logical Madame du 
Deffand's reasoning may have been, its immediate tendency was to 
render her indifferent to all that did not concern her nearly. Will- 
ing as she was to enjoy the most entire freedom in her little philo- 
sophic parties, she strongly objected that her friends should betray 
her by exercising the same liberty publicly, and reproached them 
for the bitterness with which they assailed the existing order of 
things. It was characteristic of her selfish and indifferent temper 
to look exclusively to her own quietness, and, still more, to consider 
philosophy as an art which a few amateurs exercised for private 
amusement, and which was to lead to no further result. 



MADAME DU DEFFAND. 137 

When Horace Walpole first visited Madame du Deffand, and 
began his celebrated connection with her, he found her surrounded 
by the elite of the Parisian world of intellect and fashion. D'Alem- 
bert, indeed, had deserted his old friend, for reasons which shall be 
specified hereafter, and Madame du Deffand sadly missed his mirth 
and boyish spirits; but she still enjoyed the company of many choice 
acquaintances, who amused her as much as she could be amused, 
whilst she languidly reclined in her arm-chair, making knots : the 
only occupation in which her blindness permitted her to engage. 
Pont de Veyle, grave and morose, but inimitable in parody, was 
there; so were the old and amiable Marechale de Luxembourg; the 
flattering Madame de Mirepoix; the graceful and charming Duchess 
of Choiseul; her husband the minister, — "that little volatile being 
who gave but three seconds to any one body or thing,"* and who 
preferred to his amiable wife his own sister, the clever, ambitious, 
haughty Duchess of G-rammont — "a fierce Amazonian dame, who 
loved and hated arbitrarily, was universally detested," and whose 
memorable struggle with Madame du Barry worked the ruin of her 
brother. 

The gossiping Englishman, as ennuye as any of Madame du Def- 
fand' s guests, began by ridiculing this society, ungallantly terming 
the hostess "an old debauchee of wit;" but he gradually yielded 
to the universal fascination, and after confessing that " there was a 
douceur in the society of the women of fashion that captivated him," 
he wrote home the following lively account of the " old, blind, 
charming Madame du Deffand :" — " She is now very old, and stone 
blind; but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, pas- 
sions, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays, suppers, and 
Versailles ; gives suppers twice a week ; has every new work read 
to her ; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and remem- 
bers every one that has been made these fourscore years. She cor- 
responds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him, contradicts 
him, is no bigot to him or to anybody, and laughs both at the 
clergy and the philosophers." 

As she grew older, Madame du Deffand' s insensibility of feeling 
seemed to increase. Her conduct towards Pont de Veyle was 
heartless to the last degree. The authenticity of the dialogue,")* 

* Walpole's Letters. 

"{" '"Pont de Veyle!' 'Madame!' 'Oil etes vous?' ' Au coin de votre 
cheminee,' ' Couche les pieds sur les chenets, comnie on est chez ses amis'?' 
'Oui, Madame.' ' 11 faut convenir qu'il est peu de liaisons aussi anciennes 
que la notre.' ' Cela est vrai.' ' II y a cinquante ans.' ' Oui, cinquante ans 
passes.' ' Et dans ce long intervalle aucun nuage, pas raetne Fapparence 
d*une brouillerie.' ' (Test ce que j'ai toujours admire.' 'Mais, Pont de Veyle, 

12* 



138 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

said by Grimm to have passed between the two aged lovers, may 
be doubted ; but her conduct towards him in his last illness is a 
matter of fact. On the evening of Pont de Veyle's death, she 
came to a large supper given by Madame de Marchais. As his de- 
mise was already known, the persons present condoled with her on 
the subject. "Alas!" was her feeling reply, " he died this even- 
ing at six o'clock ; otherwise you would not see me here." And 
she supped with her usual appetite. This heartlessness might pro- 
ceed from caprice, for whilst Madame du Deffand showed so much 
indifference to the fate of poor Pont de Veyle, she was carrying on 
her correspondence with Walpole ; for whom she had conceived a 
sort of passionate friendship, and who, when he visited Paris, ruled 
arbitrarily over her little circle : thus dispossessing President He- 
nault of his ancient privileges. 

This coterie of Madame du Deffand' s may be considered as the 
best illustration of French society in the eighteenth century. Un- 
like the other philosophic circles, it had no purpose more definite 
than a resource against ennui. Ministers, titled ladies, philoso- 
phers, and foreigners, met on this neutral ground; they cared little 
for one another, but they were witty, well bred, and could afford 
and receive amusement by meeting together. This society was 
justly admired for the accomplishments of its members, who con- 
tributed to spread around them their own polished and unaffected 
manners. But this was the only influence they exercised. Madame 
du Deffand had no aim, and she effected nothing. She succeeded, 
however, in making her house the resort of all the distinguished 
foreigners who visited France. When the reforming and philoso- 
phic sovereign Joseph II., the brother of Marie Antoinette, came 
to Paris in 1777, he visited Madame du Deffand, whom he found 
making knots. " This occupation," observed the emperor, " does 
not prevent you from thinking." "And especially now that you 
give every one so much cause to think," was Madame du Deffand's 
prompt and flattering reply. 

The keen wit and agreeable conversation of Madame du Deffand 
were also valued by her countrymen; but the influence she exer- 
cised over them was trifling. It requires faith in one's own opinions 
in order to impart them to others; this Madame du Deffand had 
not; she may even be said to have survived her own power. The 
most brilliant period of her circle was during the sway of Choiseul, 
when the friendship of the powerful minister contributed to her in- 
fluence. It gradually declined under the reign of Louis XVI. : her 
wit, by assuming the tone of rancour and malice, had then lost 

cela ne viendrait-il point de ce qu'au fond, nous avons toujours ete fort indif- 
ferens Tun a l'autre V ' Cela se pourrait bien, madarne.' ,; 



MADAME DU DEFFAND. 139 

many of its attractions. The times were altered, moreover: the 
philosophic power had progressed, and no longer sought the patron- 
age of narrow circles; it had become the spirit of the whole nation. 
The ill-temper and ennui of Madame du Deffand increased on be- 
holding herself neglected. She again attempted to become devout, 
but complained that she could not understand the epistles of Saint 
Paul. She took for her confessor the celebrated Pere TEnfant, 
who perished in the massacre of September, and only kept him six 
months. After spending thus several years in alternatives of 
ennui and devotion, she beheld herself at the point of death in the 
month of September of the year 1780. She sent for the cure of 
Saint Sulpice, and addressed him thus : — " M. Le Cure, you will 
be satisfied with me ; but spare me three things : let me have no 
questions, no reasons, and no sermons." 

Madame du Deffand was attended in her last illness by her old 
friends, Mesdames de Luxembourg, de Choiseul, and de Cambise, 
who played loto near her bedside every evening; and who, it is 
said, continued this interesting amusement almost to the moment 
of her death. The nature of the friendship which then united 
people of the world renders this fact sufficiently probable. 

Thus passed from life, in her eighty-fourth year, Madame du 
Deffand; a clever, selfish women, fit emblem of the aristocratic society 
which was, like her, going to disappear, and to be ere long " among 
the things that were." 



140 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. 

- Amongst the persons who composed the circle of Madame du 
Deffand was a young girl named Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, to 
whom we have as yet only alluded, because she appeared in that 
society but for a short time, and held an essentially subordinate 
position amongst the titled individuals of whom it chiefly consisted. 
Fiction has seldom brought in contact two beings of natures so 
dissimilar as when reality caused Mademoiselle de Lespinasse and 
Madame du Deffand to meet. The blindness, and other infirmities, 
of Madame du Deffand rendered it necessary for her to have a com- 
panion ; she took Mademoiselle de Lespinasse for this purpose : the 
young girl's history was brief and melancholy. She had, in reality, 
no claim to the name she bore, being the illegitimate daughter of 
Madame d'Albon, a married lady of high rank. She was brought 
up in a convent, under the name of Lespinasse ; and when she was 
of age, was placed as a governess in the family of her mother. As 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was acquainted with the secret of her 
birth, it was doubly painful to her to see herself treated as a poor 
dependent by the rich and noble family to which she belonged. The 
affection which Madame d'Albon could only show her in secret, sup- 
ported her for some time under her trials; but her mother died, and 
the proofs of her birth, which she had bequeathed to her, were, as 
well as a large sum of money, basely wrested from Julie de Lespi- 
nasse by her relatives. Her position, being now no longer alleviated 
by the kindness and love of Madame d'Albon, became singularly 
painful and humiliating. It was then that she met Madame du 
Deffand, and readily accepted her proposal of residing with her as 
" demoiselle de compao-nie." 

The cold and selfish Madame du Deffand treated her young de- 
pendent with little kindness. She made her sleep, like her, during 
the day-time, and sit up all night, in order to read aloud to her. 
This unnatural mode of life completely destroyed the health of 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. The only real consolation she found 
in this melancholy position was the friendship of D'Alembert, the 
friend of Madame du Deffand ; and, as we have already mentioned, 



MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 141 

the illegitimate son of Madame de Tencin. Even without any re- 
gard to the personal merits of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, the warm- 
hearted D'Aleinbert could not but feel deep sympathy for the 
friendless girl — like him, the unacknowledged offspring of guilty 
love. The subdued gentleness with which she bore the caprices of 
her despotic mistress moved him more deeply still. Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse, touched with the interest he felt in her fate, returned 
his proffered friendship with all the ardour and enthusiasm of her 
nature. The loneliness and suffering which embittered her early 
youth seemed to have added only new intensity to the natural fer- 
vour of her feelings. Besides the friendship of D'Alembert, Ma- 
demoiselle de Lespinasse also derived exquisite gratification from the 
intercourse of the select company which met at the house of Ma- 
dame du Deffand. Few women were, indeed, so admirably adapted 
as she was for intellectual pleasures : she revelled in them, with a 
keenness and vivacity wholly unknown to her unimpassioned mis- 
tress. This instantaneous impression, made on her mind by what- 
ever was excellent, rendered the society of Mademoiselle de Lespi- 
nasse extremely seducing for men of talent. She pleased — not 
merely by her own personal attractions, great as they were, but still 
more by the evident delight she received from the wit and eloquence 
of those to whom she listened. This singular vividness and delicacy 
of perception seemed to be communicative ; and seldom was any- 
thing good or excellent uttered in the presence of Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse without having been generally felt and understood. 

The visitors of Madame du Deffand soon discovered the great at- 
tractions, both personal and mental — for, before she had the small- 
pox, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was of a very engaging aspect — of 
her companion; but, in order not to excite the jealousy of their 
hostess, they avoided, whilst in her presence, to take too much notice 
of her young dependant. As they were desirous, however, of enjoy- 
ing the pleasure of her conversation without restraint, they secretly 
proceeded to her room about an hour before the usual time of calling 
on Madame du Deffand ; who generally slept until the arrival of her 
guests. For a long time Madame du Deffand remained unconscious 
of these circumstances ; when she, at length, knew of them, her fury 
was unbounded. She accused Mademoiselle de Lespinasse of the 
blackest treachery, and announced her intention of dismissing her 
immediately. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, seeing herself thrown 
upon the world without a home or the means of procuring one, was 
driven to despair. The reproaches of Madame du Deffand acted 
powerfully on her imagination, and, in a fit of that exaggerated sensi- 
tiveness which was to prove so fatal to her peace, she swallowed a 
dose of laudanum. Timely remedies saved her from the consequences 
of this rash act ; but her health, already much impaired, never re- 



142 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

covered the shock thus given to her nerves. To Madame du Def- 
fand' s cold and insincere expressions of regret, the young girl merely 
replied : " Madame, it is too late." No other reproach passed her 
lips. 

As soon as Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was sufficiently recovered, 
they parted. Their separation agitated the whole Parisian world. 
Ministers and ambassadors took a share in this, then, important 
affair. After vainly attempting to effect a reconciliation, which cir- 
cumstances rendered impossible, the society of Madame du Deffand 
separated into two hostile parties, who filled the whole town with 
the bitterness of their recriminations. The partisans of Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse accused Madame du Deffand of cruelty and selfishness ; 
whilst her adherents painted Mademoiselle de Lespinasse as a monster 
of ingratitude. Madame du Deffand was, however, severely blamed 
by some of her best and most intimate friends. The Marechale de 
Luxembourg furnished the apartment taken by Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse, and old President Henault offered to marry her : a pro- 
posal which she declined. The Duke of Choiseul, owing to the ex- 
ertions of her friends, procured her a pension on the king's privy 
purse ; and Madame Geoffrin, with her unostentatious benevolence, 
made her a yearly allowance. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse being 
thus placed above want, soon gathered around her a choice literary 
circle. If a new academy had been opened, it would not have caused 
so deep a sensation in French society. Many of the friends of 
Madame du Deffand deserted her, in order to join her young rival : 
she imperiously bade D'x\lembert choose between her and Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse : he did not hesitate to join the latter. 
D'Alembert was one of the few individuals who had the power of 
banishing Madame du Deffand' s ennui : his unaffected manners, the 
calm and dispassionate turn of his mind, and the engaging mirth and 
frankness which distinguished him, were all extremely agreeable to 
her: the loss of his society accordingly embittered her still more 
against her former companion, of whom she always spoke with the 
strongest animosity. It was she who spread the report of her mar- 
riage with D'Alembert — a report she knew to be false, for it was 
notoriously D'Alembert' s resolve never to marry — in order that it 
might be supposed their connection was not so innocent and credita- 
ble as the world generally thought it to be. D'Alembert greatly 
resented those attempts of his former friend (whom he now called 
u an old viper"), to injure Mademoiselle de Lespinasse; and indig- 
nantly declared, that though Madame du Deffand might have no 
faith in virtuous women, her opinion on this subject had very little 
value. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, however, checked the zeal of 
her friend : she never allowed the name of Madame du Deffand to 
be mentioned in her presence with disrespect. She seldom spoke of 



MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 143 

her former protectress herself, but when she did so it was with a 
respectful and dignified reserve. 

Shortly after his rupture with Madame du Deffand, D'Alembert 
fell dangerously ill of a contagious fever : he then inhabited the nar- 
row and unhealthy lodging of his nurse, Rousseau the glazier's wife, 
by whom he had been brought up. The doctor ordered his removal 
to a healthier apartment j and here, reckless of her personal risk and 
of the censure she might incur, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse took her 
post by the bedside of her friend, refusing to leave him until he was 
out of danger. When he was convalescent, D'Alembert took an 
apartment in the same house with her, and death alone had the 
power of separating these tried and devoted friends. Whether it 
was merely friendship that united them, and not a deeper feeling, is 
a question that has often, and very uselessly, been debated. The 
world received their version as the true one, and there is much to 
confirm it. D'Alembert seems to have entertained a warmer senti- 
ment than mere friendship for Mademoiselle de Lespinasse ; but he 
was too calm to experience a very deep passion, and to one of her 
ardent nature any other feeling would scarcely have been acceptable. 
He was besides notoriously averse to marriage, whereas Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse wished to marry. As friends they might agree ; but 
it is very improbable that they could have done so long, if their con- 
nection had been of a closer nature. 

Though consisting chiefly of the same guests who had formerly 
frequented Madame du Deffand, the society of Mademoiselle de Les- 
pinasse took a tone very different from that which had distinguished 
the elegant and worldly visitors of the convent Saint- Joseph. Ideas 
of reform and the doctrines of political economy were then beginning 
to agitate and divide French society; Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
sided with the economists and philosophic reformers. Turgot, the 
future minister of state; the bitter Morellet who expounded his 
theories, and whom Yoltaire aptly called Mord-les (bite-them) ; 
Diderot, D'Alembert, Marmontel, Chastellux, and Saint-Lambert, 
were her constant guests : they made her house the central point 
whence they disseminated their doctrines in financial, political, and 
literary matters. All the foreigners of distinction also visited Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse; and it was a subject of some jealousy 
betweeen her and Madame du Deffand as to which of the two should 
have most Englishmen. TValpole, taking Madame du Deffand's 
part, refused to see her rival ; Hume contrived to be on good terms 
with both. It was at the house of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse that 
all Hume's Parisian friends, as well as their hostess and D'Alem- 
bert, concluded that he could not wel] avoid publishing an account 
of his discussions with Rousseau, and discuss all the circumstances 
of that celebrated quarrel. The bureaux d'esprit were also social 



144 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

tribunals, which- decided every important question connected with 
literary matters. 

All the accounts left of the socioty of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, 
represent it as one of the most agreeable places of Parisian resort. 
There might be seen every evening the most remarkable individuals 
of every rank. The church, the state, and the army, were, as fairly 
represented in her drawing-room as philosophy ; and when, though 
this happened rarely, she either went to the country, or to the play, 
all Paris was informed beforehand of the important event. Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse was, perhaps, one of the most fascinating 
women of her day. Many surpassed her in youth and beauty — for 
she had never been very handsome, and when her society was fully 
formed she had already passed the golden days of youth — many 
were as clever, and a greater number still were far more brilliant 
and witty • but none equalled her in that deep power of seduction — 
deep and great, because involuntarily exercised — which drew around 
her the most celebrated men of those times. Mademoiselle de Les- 
pinasse listened more than she spoke \ but when she did speak it was 
admirably : she uttered, however, no witticisms, and none of those 
artificially clever sayings then so much in vogue ; and which, often 
look as though they had been prepared beforehand for the occasions 
on which they were delivered. Her power was not merely intellec- 
tual : it sprang less from the activity of her mind than from the 
depth and fervour of her feelings. This very fervour seemed to say 
that she was not formed for happiness : she was too ardent and 
excitable for this calm state of mind. Secluded from affection dur- 
ing her unhappy youth, her whole soul, on regaining its freedom, 
gave itself up, not to ordinary love, but to a bewildering and intoxi- 
cating passion never meant for earth. It was this inward fire which, 
whilst it consumed her frail being, gave her so deep a charm, and 
imparted to her language a passion and eloquence rarely surpassed. 

With respect to the society over which she presided, Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse had another remarkable and still more necessary 
talent: it was the infinite tact with which she brought the most 
opposite characters into contact, and kept them together in perfect 
harmony. Without imposing any restraint on conversation, she 
knew how to direct it, and prevent it from ever becoming vapid or 
insignificant: in that age of women, accomplished in the art of guiding 
social intercourse, none excelled her in this respect. 

It was not, however, the aim of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to 
check discussion; which was then the spirit of every meeting. All 
the new works were reviewed and criticised in the fashionable draw- 
ing-rooms, where the acts of the government likewise underwent a 
free scrutiny : circumstances compelled society to be its own organ. 
The result of this was, that discussions, through long practice, were 



MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 145 

carried on with a politeness and courtly ease now unknown in 
France ; in consequence of the political changes which have since 
then occurred in that country. In a nation absolutely governed, 
party-spirit never could run high ; the Revolution, by rousing the 
passions of the masses, substituted a more energetic, but less elegant, 
mode of expressing them. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse greatly en- 
couraged this habit of discussing the questions of the day : it imparted 
to the men who assembled in her house a social power, by means of 
which they afterwards attained to political eminence. These dis- 
cussions, at the same time, gave them the dangerous habit of judging, 
and deciding rapidly, questions that required the exercise of a calm 
and dispassionate mind. 

It argues greatly in favour of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse' s attrac- 
tions, that the distinguished men who were preparing the approach- 
ing change in the fundamental principles of government, gathered 
around her without any motives to do so, beyond her own merits. 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse had no position in society — no connec- 
tions ; and, not being sufficiently wealthy to keep open house, she 
only received between the hours of dinner and supper. Even 
D'Alembert, who listened to her with child-like docility, was con- 
fessedly only a secondary attraction, when compared to his friend. 
She was the only woman whom Madame G-eoffrin admitted at the 
dinner she gave to literary men once a week, and over which the 
presence of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse shed a singular charm; whe- 
ther she listened to the discourse of others, as her own taste and un- 
affected modesty prompted her to do, or whether she spoke with that 
flow of pure and eloquent language with which she was gifted. 

But, with the external graces of a Frenchwoman of the eighteenth 
century, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse had none of the heartlessness 
which characterized the period : her soul had all the fire and passion 
of those burning climes where life passes as a feverish dream. In- 
difference was a feeling unknown to her : she either revelled in 
enthusiastic bliss, or she was overwhelmed with despair. A calm 
and even state of mind was insupportable to her ) and, fatal as it 
proved to her peace, it was perhaps this perpetual mobility of feeling 
and impressions which rendered her presence so deeply attractive. 

Amongst the foreigners of distinction who called on this fasci- 
nating woman, during their stay in Paris, was the Marquis of Mora, 
a young Spanish noble of distinguished talents. He soon conceived 
a deep passion for Mademoiselle de Lespinasse; this feeling almost 
resembled idolatry : even the least penetrating among her guests 
noticed his silent and fervent adoration. The family of M. de 
Mora heard of his attachment, and fearing lest he should be seduced 
into a marriage with one so much beneath him in birth and fortune, 
they called him back to Spain. Before his departure, the Marquis 
13 



146 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

of Mora declared his passion, and received from Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse the assurance that it was returned. M. de Mora re- 
mained three years in his native country; his health, which was 
naturally delicate, became seriously impaired ; his parents, however, 
only waited for his convalescence in order to marry him suitably to 
his rank. The correspondence between the lovers was incessant 
during their separation ; but the obstacles her passion received em- 
bittered the temper of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and the excellent 
D'Alembert, though still devotedly attached to her, often suffered 
from her caprices. Such, however, was the sincerity of his affection, 
that it was he who every morning went to the post-office in order to 
look for the letters of M. de Mora, which he brought back to Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse by the time she wakened. On learning the 
illness of her lover, she prevailed on D' Aiembert to obtain from his 
friend Lorry, the celebrated doctor, a written declaration that the 
climate of Spain disagreed with the young noble, and that in order 
to save his life it would be necessary to let him visit Paris once 
more. On learning this, the family of M. de Mora no longer refused 
to accede to his wishes; he was accordingly allowed to set out for 
France : but the fatigue of the journey was too much for him, in his 
weakened state, and he died at Bordeaux, without having seen once 
more the woman he had so ardently loved. 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was overwhelmed with grief, and 
from that time she slowly declined. Regret for the death of her 
lover was thought to be the reason of her failing health ; but such 
was not the case : deep as that grief was, there lay hidden in her 
heart another sorrow, deeper still. 

During the absence of M. de Mora, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
had met with the Count of G-uibert — a man who then ranked high 
in the opinion of the world, though now comparatively forgotten. 
His talents were remarkable, without being of the first order ; the 
secret of his great success, especially with women, was the singular 
charm of his conversation : brilliant, vigorous, original — not, per- 
haps, in idea, but in manner — it never seemed to weary. Such was 
the power of his diction, that, when he read aloud his indifferent 
tragedy of the " Connetable," he never failed to excite the highest 
enthusiasm in his audience, who all felt convinced they had heard a 
masterpiece ; it was not until they read for themselves that the 
charm was dissolved. The character of this clever man was a com- 
pound of ambitious and generous feelings : the former, however, 
greatly predominated. 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse saw him, and the universal fascina- 
tion which he exercised became, in her ardent soul, a deeper feeling. 
M. de Mora was not forgotten, but he no longer held the same place 
in her heart : she idolized his virtues, his generous and noble mind ; 



MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 147 

but she did not love him as she had loved him once. Whilst she 
thus obeyed a fascination that appears to have been irresistible, her 
soul was, however, burdened with grief and remorse. Her incon- 
stancy lowered her in her own esteem : she felt herself becoming 
unworthy of M. de Mora, and that for one whose feelings towards 
her were scarcely above indifference j and yet, notwithstanding every 
emotion of pride, shame, and regret, she still blindly loved on, con- 
suming her being in this vain struggle against a hopeless passion. 
The death of M. de Mora added to her grief, but could not lessen 
her unhappy love. 

M. de Guibert soon perceived the passion he had inspired. He 
felt nothing for Mademoiselle de Lespinasse beyond mere friendship 
— if his feelings went so far ; but his vanity was nattered to see 
himself so ardently beloved by an admired and accomplished woman. 
He spoke and acted as though her feelings were returned. Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse blinded herself wilfully : she would not see 
that M. de Guibert was only yielding to the suggestions of vanity ; 
that he had no real affection for her. For some time the seduction 
of her manners kept her lover really spell-bound, and under her 
control. But a passion so ardent as was hers could not always be 
one of unbroken serenity. On the first stormy explanation, M. de 
Guibert resumed his freedom. When he said, " We must love no 
longer !" Mademoiselle de Lespinasse answered with all her remain- 
ing strength, "Then I cannot live!" Touched by her despair he 
endeavoured to soothe her, and partly succeeded; but she soon gave 
him an opportunity of repeating his assertion of indifference : and 
thus he kept her for several years, alternately declaring that he 
shared her feelings, or that he could never love her ; every time 
inflicting a deeper wound, until his marriage with another broke the 
last hope of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and with it her heart. 
From that time forward until the epoch of her death, which occurred 
soon afterwards, she only pined slowly away. 

It was whilst Mademoiselle de Lespinasse thus consumed her life 
in despairing grief — with occasional gleams of hope, whose transient 
sunshine scarcely enlivened the dreary desert over which she trod 
alone — that she addressed to M. de Guibert those admirable and 
impassioned letters, in which she describes the torments of her soul 
with such painful fidelity, that, notwithstanding the errors of this 
ill-disciplined being, it is impossible to lay down the book with any 
other feeling than one of deep and unmingled pity. 

The style of this singular correspondence — written whilst Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse was sinking under the pressure of woe and 
disease, and when she was also ennervated by the use of opium, to 
which her want of rest compelled her to resort — is, nevertheless, full 
of life, vigour, and eloquence. If these letters have not yet assumed 



148 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

their place amongst the classical works of the eighteenth century, it 
can only be attributed to the contagious and despairing melancholy 
that breathes in every page. 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was painfully conscious of her errors : 
her letters are full of self-reproach ; but, though she owed all her 
misery to the impassioned nature which, according to her own ad- 
mission, carried every feeling to excess, and made it impossible for 
her to love moderately, she would not have exchanged her sufferings 
for the joys of others. 

"If I had been calm, reasonable, and cold," she observed in one 
of her letters to M. de Gruibert, " nothing of all this would have 
happened. I would have spent my life like those women who play 
with their fans, talking of the judgment of M. Morangiez, or of the 
entry of the Countess of Provence into Paris. But, I repeat it, I 
prefer my misery to all which the worldly may call happiness or 
pleasure. I may die ; but better this than to have never lived," 

Of the burning eloquence profusely poured forth in her letters, 
extracts can give no adequate idea, though they may serve to paint 
the state of her mind. How deep, in its very gentleness, is the re- 
proach conveyed in her answer to a coldly compassionate letter of 
M. de G-uibert. "Pity me, my friend, but do not tell me that you 
pity me." And how much of the wretchedness which consumed 
her soul is laid bare in the following letter : — 

"Ah ! if you were to know what I suffer: how fearfully my heart 
is torn when I am abandoned to myself; when I am no longer sup- 
ported by your presence or your memory. Ah ! then it is that the 
remembrance of M. de Mora becomes a feeling so active and so 
penetrating, that I am filled with horror for life and for my love. 
I abhor the erring passion which has made me so guilty; which has 
made me fill with anxiety and fear a heart so tender and wholly de- 
voted to me Oh ! how much was I loved by that soul so 

full of fire and energy, which had appreciated and judged everything, 
and which, indifferent to all else, had abandoned itself to the want 
and the delight of loving. Thus, my friend, thus was I loved. 

"Several years had elapsed, fraught with all the charm and all 
the woe inseparable from a passion so strong and so deep, when you 
came to pour poison into my heart, and to lay waste my soul with 
doubt and remorse. Oh, my G-od! what did you not make me suf- 
fer ! You drew me away from my love, and yet I saw that you 
were not mine : do you understand all the horror of this position ? 
How can one live through so much grief? How can one still find 
happiness in saying, ' My friend, I love you, and that with so much 
truth and tenderness, that it is impossible your soul can remain cold 
whilst listening to me V " 

This style is carried farther still in another letter, written at mid- 



MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 149 

night, on the anniversary of M. de Mora's decease. After dwelling 
on the virtues of her former lover, and on her faithfulness to him at 
the very epoch of his death, in the most forcible language, she sud- 
denly adds, without any transition : "I am dying with grief : my 
eyes and my heart are full of tears. Farewell ! I should not have 
loved you." And the contrast of this simple yet deep expression of 
regret, to the excess of her offence, before so strikingly portrayed, 
renders her overwhelming remorse only more apparent. 

These feelings, preying on a mind so ardent and sensitive, soon 
reduced Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to the verge of insanity. When 
she learned the approaching marriage of M. de G-uibert, she felt 
herself that it was thus. " I feel it : my life depends on my mad- 
ness : if I were to become calm, if reason were restored to me, I 
could not live twenty-four hours longer. Do you know the first 
want of my soul when it has been violently agitated by pleasure or 
grief ? It is to write to M. de Mora ! I reanimate him : I call 
him back to life. My heart rests on his; my soul is poured forth 
before him : the warmth, the rapidity of my blood conquer death ; 
for I see him : he lives, he breathes, for me ; he hears me : my 
brain is on fire, I no longer need illusion : truth itself is before me. 
Yes, you are not more present, more perceptible to my senses, than 

M. de Mora has been for the last hour Divine creature ! 

he has forgiven me : he loved me ! Ah ! how deep a bliss 

there is in love ! Love, the sole principle of all that is beautiful, of 
all that is good and great in nature." 

3Iademoiselle de Lespinasse had borne the marriage of M. de 
Gruibert with comparative calmness, but it was the natural and 
inevitable indifference of manner which followed it that she could 
not bear. Gathering around her all the womanly pride which she 
had cast away so long, she addressed her former lover thus : — 

u I have forbidden myself complaints and reproaches : it seemed 
to me that it would be base to speak of my misfortune to him who 
had caused it wilfully ..... Without supposing you to feel any 
great tenderness for me, or much interest in my fate, I thought I 
might rely on what decency and my misfortune prescribed to 
you. I waited; and, after a lapse of ten days since your absence, 

I received from the castle of C , a note which is a masterpiece 

of indifference and harshness. It filled me with indignation. I con- 
ceived a feeling of horror against you, and soon afterwards against 
myself .... Your marriage, in allowing me to know your soul, 
has repulsed and closed mine for ever. Oh, no ! do not think 
that I shall follow your advice, and take my models from the novels 
of 3Iadame Riccoboni. Oh ! how deeply your comparison between 
my misfortune and that incident in the novel wounded me ! How 
cold and deficient in delicacy you then appeared to me ! and how 

13* 



150 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

much above you I thought myself by feeling that I was capable of a 

passion you could not even understand I will not tell you 

that I wish for your friendship, or that I have any for you : the 
charm and pleasure of this feeling is the confidence on which it is 
founded ; and you know whether your actions and general conduct 
were likely to inspire me with any. Farewell ! — allow me the im- 
pulse of pride and vengeance, which makes me find pleasure in 
declaring that I forgive you, and that it is no longer in your power 
to make me know apprehension and grief under any aspect what- 
soever." 

With this last effort of pride and injured love, the strength of 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse deserted her: she wrote no more to M. 
de Gruibert, and died silently j carrying, as she thought, her secret to 
the grave. 

The death of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was an event long felt 
in French society : she was, however, more regretted by her acquaint- 
ances than by her friends. This was natural and just. A soul so 
absorbed by passion as was hers, could no longer be adapted for the 
calm and gentle offices of friendship. During the latter portion of 
her life, the society over which she presided had even become bur- 
densome to her. She was often obliged to leave her drawing-room 
in an uncontrollable burst of grief, in order to seek some retired spot 
where she might weep and mourn alone. Notwithstanding the altera- 
tion of her behaviour, from which she had suffered more than any 
one, D'Alembert never ceased to deplore the loss of Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse. On hearing of her death, Madame du Deffand pet- 
tishly exclaimed, " If she had only died fifteen years sooner, I should 
not have lost d'Alembert \" A touching funeral eulogy, worthy of 
the heart of her by whom it was uttered. 

It was long believed that grief for the death of M. de Mora had 
carried Mademoiselle de Lespinasse to the grave. The publication 
of her letters to M. de Gruibert first revealed the error and misery of 
this unhappy woman ; whose ardent feelings, unsubdued by judg- 
ment, cut her off prematurely from the world where she had suffered 
so deeply in the course of a brief life. 

There is in the strange character and destiny of Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse a social meaning that should not be forgotten. She em- 
bodied the sufferings of the age in her love sorrows. She was 
separated from M. de Mora, whom she would, perhaps, have never 
ceased to love but for that separation; and she lost the love of M. 
de Gruibert because she was not a high-born and noble woman. Like 
Rousseau, she had aspirations towards democracy; and for being 
silent and secret, like her grief, those aspirations were not the less 
deep. The aristocratic world in which she lived, by which she was 
both slighted and admired, where she might love but was never to 



MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE. 151 

be loved in return-— not, at least, by a pure and honourable love — 
had grown odious to her. If, like Rousseau, she had not become one 
of the voices of the age, it was because she was a woman, and that 
her sorrows were essentially womanly. She shrank from exposing 
them to public scorn. D'Alembert himself never knew of her love 
for M. de G-uibert until after her death; when he was painfully 
affected by discovering that it was not only M. de Mora whom she 
had preferred to him, but that there was also another. 

The whole life of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse was a real though 
vain protest against the conventional society from which she had 
suffered so much. She was silent under her sorrows, not only for 
the reasons already mentioned, but also because her eloquence, 
though deep, was less the eloquence of genius than that of a des- 
pairing and broken heart. Had she been happy and beloved, her 
name would now be scarcely known : she would be remembered as 
one of the accomplished women of her times j but the few literary 
productions she has left — and they are singularly slight and unin- 
teresting — would have inevitably given a most erroneous opinion of 
her mind. Her power was not creative, as that of genius always 
is ; but if she could not conceive, she felt deeply, and expressed her 
feelings with heart-rending truth and bitterness : and yet there is, 
as we have already said, a deep social meaning in her life. She was 
one of that vast multitude who, though surrounded and contaminated 
by the sceptical and corrupting influences of the eighteenth century, 
had yet in them the germ of a nobler nature, and yearned for a purer 
and freer air than the heated and artificial atmosphere they breathed. 
Those aspirations towards excellence marked the last clays of Louis 
the Fifteenth's reign, and the opening of his successor's sway. They 
foretold the coming revolution, and the existence of a vast discontent 
which rendered it inevitable. 

How many, like Rousseau or Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, were 
then crushed by those social distinctions which they so deeply des- 
pised. How many, like them, by the public or private expression 
of their feelings, hastened the decay of a hateful tyranny, until it fell 
overwhelmed, in the universal reprobation. Democracy, however 
mistaken in the forms it may assume, is but the open expression of 
the long and unknown sufferings of the multitude. Thus, when 
great crises are at hand, every token of the times assumes new in- 
terest, and there may be found deep significance, even in the hidden 
sorrows of a lonely woman's heart. 



152 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER TIL 

Madame Geoffrin — Influence of the Bureaux d'Esprit. 

One of the few women whom Madame de Tencin admitted to 
her reunions towards the close of her life, was a quiet, middle-aged 
bourgeoise, unassuming alike in dress and manner, and named Ma- 
dame Geoffrin. " She comes here to see what she can secure out of 
my inheritance," Madame de Tencin often observed, with a smile, to 
her friends. Madame Geoffrin' s object was, indeed, to become per- 
sonally acquainted with the eminent men who met at the house of 
the ex-nun, in order, whenever her demise should occur, to gather 
them around herself. 

Madame cle Tencin was neither annoyed nor disturbed by the 
knowledge of her visitor's intentions: she received her well, and 
even gave her some professional advice. The following maxim is 
characteristic of the donor : " Be complaisant to every man you 
know; though nine out of ten should not care a whit for you, the 
tenth may live to prove a useful friend." Without acting exclu- 
sively according to this precept, Madame Geoffrin fully retained 
the spirit of the advice she had received. 

On the death of Madame de Tencin, the Bourgeoise effected the 
long-cherished project of succeeding to her power. She greatly en- 
larged the circle of her predecessor, and may be said to have founded 
a new society, which rivalled that of Madame du Deffand; between 
whom and Madame Geoffrin there accordingly sprang up an open 
and lasting feeling of enmity. 

It was the thirst of worldly distinction which then possessed the 
members of every class of society, that induced Madame Geoffrin to 
open a bureau d'esprit. She knew that she had no brilliant talents 
by which she could shine herself, and therefore wished to be con- 
sidered the friend and patroness of eminent men. Her love of em- 
pire, moreover, made her desire to rule quietly over an admired 
literary court. She was neither extremely witty nor even educated, 
since she did not know how to spell; but literature and philosophy 
were then ail the rage ; Madame Geoffrin complied with the pre- 
vailing tone, and opened her house to the philosophic tribe. Not- 
withstanding the deficiencies of her education, she was well fitted for 



MADAME GEOFFRIN. 153 

her self-appointed task : her excellent sense, benevolence, and deep 
knowledge of the world, adapted her admirably to lead and concili- 
ate the vain and irritable sect she had undertaken to patronize. 

Her tact and kindness soon rendered her house one of the ren- 
dezvous of the Parisian world. Her power, in time, even became 
so high that all the German courts, who had any pretensions to 
philosophy, duly paid correspondents to inform them of the subjects 
discussed by her circle. One of the first acts of Catherine II., on 
ascending the Imperial throne of Russia, was to send a salaried 
commissioner to the court of Madame Geoffrin ; who, by her con- 
summate tact, had succeeded in rendering it the European school of 
bon ton. Madame Geoffrin' s great study in life had been to gain 
that acquaintance with the world which was necessary to the posi- 
tion she intended to assume : she soon excelled in this knowledge, 
which supplied the deficiencies of her education. Though she was 
not versed either in literature or in art, she drew around her authors 
and artists, and by listening a propos, and never speaking on what 
she did not understand, succeeded in presiding with infinite grace 
and judgment over their meetings. 

Madame Geoffrin was not, however, a mere silent listener; she 
had learned, in the intercourse of persons of high rank, whom she 
adroitly induced to visit her, that peculiar phraseology, exquisitely 
polished, even in its incorrectness, known as the "style de grand 
seigneur." No one surpassed her in the art of story-telling: her 
language was clear, concise, and displayed the mingled sense and 
shrewdness of her mind. The ideas of Madame Geoffrin never 
soared, however, above her station ; she was as essentially a modest 
and sensible bourgeoise, as Madame du Deffand was a brilliant and 
epicurian woman of the world. The plainness of her person, and 
the elegant simplicity of her attire; the manner in which she pro- 
vided her house with all the luxurious comforts of wealth, free from 
its ostentatious eclat; and her own timidity, good sense, and mingled 
thrift and benevolence, were alike characteristic of the middle classes 
of life, to which she belonged. Her wit was, like everything about 
her, quiet and unpretending; it never stepped beyond a certain cir- 
cle; she often gave to the most ingenious ideas a homely, and even 
commonplace form. Her repartees are, generally, too idiomatic to 
bear translation. A person was once speaking, in her presence, of 
the Abbe Trublet, a man of little talent, but who, by living in the 
intercourse of Fontenelle, and other talented men, had acquired a 
certain degree of tact and cleverness. "Ah!" said Madame Geof- 
frin, with her usual bonhomie, "c'estun sot frotte d'esprit." A fool 
nibbed over with wit, may give some idea of her meaning. This 
bon mot had immense success, the poor abbe being very much dis- 
liked. There was still more severity in her observation concerning 



154 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Richelieu and Voisenon, the most corrupt men of the age. "Thesis 
two men are, after all, only the peelings (epluchures) of great 
vices." But her most celebrated remark, and that which shows best 
the kindness, and worldly knowledge by which she was so much 
distinguished, is that which she addressed to her friend Rulhiere. 
He had written a work containing disclosures on the court of Russia, 
and from the publication of which he expected to derive considerable 
gains. Madame Geoffrin, thinking, on the contrary, that this work 
might bring him into trouble, offered him a large sum to suppress 
it. Rulhiere's reply was an eloquent declamation against the mean- 
ness of accepting money in order to conceal the truth. Madame 
Geoffrin heard him to the end; she then quietly said, "How much 
more will you have, Rulhiere?" When this anecdote was related 
by Rulhiere, himself, to the Prince of Schomberg, the latter, for- 
getting in the presence of whom he was speaking, enthusiastically 
exclaimed, "Ah! c'est sublime!" 

It was not often that Madame de Geoffrin indulged in witticisms : 
she was, at the same time, severe and indulgent. Her temper, 
which she took great pains to subdue, was by nature somewhat- 
brusque and impatient ; but her judgment was calm, and, as she 
was perfectly unimaginative, she could seldom be deceived in her 
opinion — rarely a favourable one— of the characters of those around 
her. But, whilst experience of the world rendered her a keen 
judge of human foibles, her kindness of heart made her deal gently 
with the errors she saw most clearly. " To give and forgive" was 
her maxim throughout life ; and no one ever accused her of having 
failed in carrying it into practice. So far did she extend her for- 
bearance, even with regard to the most trivial matters, that she held 
it a duty to listen as attentively to the tedious speeches of a fool as 
to the brilliant and amusing discourse of a man of wit. "Besides," 
she philosophically added, when explaining this theory to a friend, 
" if you let a fool alone, he will talk about himself; and, let him 
be ever so foolish, this is a subject on which he can scarcely fail to 
become instructive and eloquent." The close and ever-attentive 
observer of human nature is betrayed by this remark. 

It was this calm good sense and gentle forbearance that consti- 
tuted Madame Geoffrin's great attraction. She was benevolent ; but 
those who had no benefits to derive from her sought her company as 
eagerly as those whom she assisted. She did not dazzle like Madame 
du Deffand, or fascinate like Mademoiselle de Lespinasse; but she 
had a homely, familiar charm of her own. Without much origina- 
lity, without acquired knowledge, and even without anything re- 
sembling brilliancy or imagination, the quiet, prosaical bourgeoise 
exercised a power which was widely felt. No one who had seen her 
once in her own house, neatly but always simply attired, sitting by 



MADAME GEOFFRIN. 155 

the fireside in her large arm-chair, her hands demurely folded on her 
knees, her gentle countenance beaming with cheerfulness, whilst she 
occasionally uttered one of her brief but clear and penetrating re- 
marks — no one who had once seen and heard her thus, but wished 
to see' more of Madame G-eoffrin. 

It was, indeed, like a mother in the midst of her children, that 
Madame Geoffrin presided over the circle she had gathered around 
her. She listened to her friends, spoke very little herself, and was 
never ashamed of confessing her ignorance. "What!" said she, 
when an Italian abbe once wished to dedicate to her a grammar of 
his native language, " dedicate a grammar to me, when I do not 
even know how to spell V ? At the same time, she exercised a direct 
and motherly control over her guests. They were not to attack the 
State ; their philosophy was to be of the most sober cast ; she would 
not have loud or earnest discussions even on literary subjects : 
everything was to be quiet, composed, and moderate, like her own 
feelings. Though she scarcely appeared to interfere in the conver- 
sations going on around her, Madame Geoffrin found the means, by 
her infinite tact, to set to it the precise limits she wished it to have. 
She was naturally too timid and cautious to tolerate the philosophic 
exaggerations of her friends. It soon became notorious in " the 

CO 

holy philosophic church," as the philosophers very irreverently 
styled their body, that " Mere Geoffrin" would by no means allow 
imprudence of any sort, and that those who frequented her house 
must necessarily submit to the regulations she thought fit to estab- 
lish. 

Although she thus set very firm bounds to the intellectual free- 
dom which was the very spirit of philosophy, Madame Geoffrin was 
tenderly loved by her friends. Few could resist the charm of her 
abrupt but inexhaustible kindness of heart, and those who could 
have withstood this attraction found her dinners and evening parties 
too admirably organized to be given up for want of a little complai- 
sance on their part. Madame Geoffrin was, however, thought to 
carry her empire sometimes too far. Not satisfied with checking 
the expression of opinion, she wished to interfere in the private 
affairs of her friends : always, it is true, with the object of rendering 
them some service, whether in the shape of advice or of pecuniary 
assistance. She was proud — and with reason — of her consummate 
knowledge of the world; and as nothing flattered more her good- 
natured vanity than to be appealed to in delicate matters, so she 
was not a little mortified when her counsels were either rejected or 
despised. One of her fundamental maxims was, that poor literary 
men were bound to remain single. If, in spite of her advice, some 
needy author thought fit to marry, she was extremely angry with 
him; but invariably ended by relenting, visiting his wife, spoiling 



156 ' WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

the children, if there were any, and doing everything in her power 
to lighten the burden of an increasing family. 

But, though Madame Geoffrin was an active and disinterested 
friend, she was not capable of experiencing the heroic and devoted 
feelings which can raise friendship to the height of a passion. Her 
friendship was, like her benevolence, without the tenderness which 
gives those feelings their greatest charm. She was as impatient to 
oblige her friends as to assist persons in distress; but she did not 
like to be pained by the sight of the sufferings she relieved : she 
dreaded emotion under every aspect : to pass quietly through life ; 
to be both useful and respected; and, if possible, never to be annoyed 
or deranged, was her great object. There was, in all her gene- 
rosity, a sort of latent selfishness, which rendered it, perhaps, more 
human, but not the less worthy of respect for this. The greatest 
blemish in her character was moral timidity : she would do much 
for a friend, but she could not compromise herself on his account. 
She never liked to praise her friends to strangers : she averred that 
it only excited envy. She likewise made it a rule not to defend 
them if they were attacked in her presence ; for this, she said, only 
irritated their enemies still further. 

The same cautiousness marked her own conduct. Notwithstand- 
ing her philosophic connections, Madame Geoffrin was devout ; but 
this she concealed with as much care as another woman would have 
taken to hide her love intrigues. She attended mass privately, had 
an apartment in a convent, and a pew in the church of the Capu- 
cins; but all this was conducted with profound mystery, and studi- 
ously concealed from her friends. This fact gives a very forcible 
opinion of the singular intolerance the philosophers exercised. At 
the same time, and though Madame Greoffrin owed to the position 
she had assumed the title of foster-mother of the philosophers, she 
never tolerated the atheism of Diderot, or the doctrines of Helvetius. 
They both originally belonged to her society ; but, though she was 
attached to them personally, she found the means of quietly dropping 
their public acquaintance ; in consequence of which they joined the 
society of Baron d'Holbach. This separation was effected without 
the least eclat, which Madame Geoffrin always feared and disliked. 
Her subserviency to the opinion of the world was well known 
amongst her friends, who could ascertain, by the scarcely perceptible 
variations of her manner, their position in society. When Helvetius 
had published his celebrated and mUch-condemned work, he laugh- 
ingly said, — u I shall easily know the effect it has produced on the 
public, by the manner of Madame Geoffrin on our next meeting." 

The wealth of Madame Geoffrin allowed her to indulge in her 
benevolence — and she seems to have been munificent in a singular 
degree — as well as in the hospitality she gave to literature, without 



MADAME GEOFFRIN. 157 

any detriment to her fortune. Her husband, a quiet and not very 
clever man, allowed his wife to indulge in her tastes to the fullest 
extent, and contented himself with superintending the costly enter- 
tainments she gave to her guests; by many of whom he was only 
known as " that old gentleman who sat in a corner saying nothing. " 
The society which gathered around Madame Geoffrin was com- 
posed partly of the disciples of Yoltaire, and partly of those of Rous- 
seau; though she tolerated the friends of the Genevese, she had a 
very ill opinion of his character, the violent and declamatory tone 
of which was not indeed likely to please her sober judgment. We 
have already said, that Madame Geoffrin did not allow great freedom 
of discussion; but she only moderated the imprudence of her friends : 
she did not seek to guide them, for the reason that she had few 
opinions of her own on the subjects they discussed. Thus, notwith- 
standing her prudence and cautiousness, the society which met at 
her house was distinguished for the individual independence of its 
members. Madame G-eoffrin gave two dinners a week; one destined 
to artists, and the other to men of letters. D'Alembert and Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse were present at the latter of those dinners. 
D'Alembert, released from his severe though beloved studies, dis- 
played that frank, boyish mirth which had formerly amused Madame 
du Deffand. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, more grave than her 
friend, and, latterly, rather sad and weary-looking, occasionally 
broke forth from her habitual silence, to speak briefly, and yet 
eloquently, on the subject discussed by the other guests. Marivaux 
— who saw a finesse in all that was said or done, and who tortured 
his subtle but unimaginative mind, in order to give an ingenious 
turn to everything he uttered — was also there. The cold and re- 
served Thomas, whose fame has suffered from the proud indifference 
he felt for the women of his time; the declamatory Raynal; Mairan, 
the learned antagonist of Madame du Chatelet; her lover, Saint- 
Lambert; the keen, satirical Galiani; and many now forgotten, but 
who then had their day, were also among the guests of Madame 
Geoffrin. She presided at these dinners with her usual tact, direct- 
ing conversation by occasional interjections — an art in which she 
excelled — or exercising her talent of story-telling for the amusement 
of her guests. 

• Besides the distinction which the friendship of men of talent 
naturally conferred upon her, the gentle Madame Geoffrin did not 
fail in worldly honours. Stanislaus Poniatowski, whilst he was still 
a Polish noble, visited her house, and was a great favourite with her, 
always calling her by the endearing name of " mother." His ex- 
travagance having made him run into debt, he was imprisoned in 
Fort TEveque. Madame Geoffrin, on hearing of his mishap, im- 
mediately satisfied the demands of his creditors. The sovereign did 
14 



158 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

not forget the debt of kindness incurred by the obscure noble; and 
when Stanislaus had been raised to the throne of Poland, one of his 
first acts was to write to Madame Geoffrin, "Mama, your son is 
king." He invited her, in the same letter, to come and visit him 
in Warsaw. Notwithstanding her advanced age, Madame Geoffrin 
complied with his request. Her journey through Germany was a 
complete triumph; she was especially received with distinguished 
honours by the Empress Maria Theresa, who was then concluding 
her alliance with France, and did not neglect this opportunity of 
showing the esteem in which she held the nation over which her 
daughter was to reign. On her arrival in the king's palace, at 
Warsaw, Madame Geoffrin was inexpressibly touched to find herself 
introduced into an apartment absolutely similar to that which she 
occupied in Paris. The attentions of her adopted son, during her 
sojourn with him, were marked by the same delicacy and gallantry. 
On her return through Vienna, she again saw Maria Theresa, who 
presented her daughters to her. Marie Antoinette, when Queen of 
France, recollected this interview, and on meeting Madame Geoffrin, 
at a subsequent epoch, reminded her of it in flattering terms. Such 
was the importance in which the quiet Madame Geoffrin was then 
held, that the least details of her journey to Poland, and the letters 
which she wrote home to her friends, occupied all the polite world 
of Paris during the time of her absence. She even acquired a sort 
of political power, or rather influence, through the friendship of 
Prince Kaunitz, one of the distinguished foreigners who visited her 
house. Owing to her intervention, he softened the difficulties which 
awaited Cardinal Rohan's embassy at the Court of Vienna. 

Nothing had been wanting to gratify the ambition of the kind- 
hearted and amiable bourgeoise when the increasing infirmities of 
old age told her of her approaching end. She understood the warn- 
ing, and submitted to her fate, with calm and unaffected resignation. 
The latter days of her life were, however, embittered by the quar- 
rels of her philosophic friends with her daughter, Madame de la 
Ferte-Imbault ; who had always manifested the greatest antipathy 
for the whole tribe of authors who visited her mother's house, and 
many of whom were, she knew, wholly dependent upon her bounty. 
This lady refused, during the last illness of her mother, to admit 
D'Alembert, Morellet, and Marmontel into her presence; alleging 
that they would, according to the custom of ultra-philosophers in 
such cases, have endeavoured to prevent Madame Geoffrin from ful- 
filling her religious duties. Without contradicting this imputation, 
the philosophers complained very bitterly of Madame de la Ferte- 
Imbault's conduct, and were so unrestrained in their language that, 
when Madame Geoffrin partly recovered, she found herself compelled, 
by the eclat they had made, to cease seeing either her daughter or 



MADAME GEOFFRIN. 159 

her three friends. She naturally decided the case in favour of Ma- 
dame de la Ferte-Imbault, and, without wholly approving her con- 
duct — which had been as deficient in tact and wisdom as that of the 
philosophers was in delicacy — she observed, with a smile, "that she 
had acted like Godefroy de Bouillon, by defending her tomb against 
the infidels. " With the exception of D'Alembert, Morellet, and 
Marmontel, she saw all her friends as usual, until a relapse of her 
complaint carried her off, in the autumn of 1777; she was then in 
the seventy-eighth year of her age. 

Nothing could exceed the serenity of her last hours. Two days 
before her death, some of her friends, who were seated near her bed- 
side, discussed aloud the means a government possessed of render- 
ing men happier. Every one had given his opinion on the subject, 
when Madame Geoffrin, who then suffered acutely, wakening up 
from her seeming torpor, quietly observed, "You have not spoken 
of the duty of governments to procure pleasures for their subjects : 
sufficient attention has never been paid to this point/' The same 
wish of quiet, practical usefulness, which had been her characteristic 
throughout life, animated her to the last. 

Notwithstanding her inexhaustible kindness, and many high qua- 
lities, the excellent Madame Geoffrin was very soon forgotten; even 
by those who had formerly derived most benefits from her friend- 
ship. A few there were, however, like Madame Suard, the author's 
wife, who could not pass by the house where Madame Geoffrin had 
once resided, without pausing to bless in their hearts the gentle 
memory of her who had dwelt there so long. D'Alembert felt the 
loss of his old friend very deeply. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, 
with whom he had been in the habit of spending his evenings, had 
not long been dead, and every morning he went to seek consolation 
in the society of the kind and soothing Madame Geoffrin. "Alas V 
he mournfully exclaimed when she too was taken from him, " Alas ! 
I have now neither evenings nor mornings left V 

The deaths of Hume, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and Madame 
Geoffrin, occurring as they did within the space of one year, were 
serious losses to the philosophic party; which gradually declined in 
strength as a compact body, whilst it daily acquired new power by 
disseminating its doctrines more widely. The bureau d'esprit of 
Madame Geoffrin may almost be considered as the last of its class. 
It is true that she was outlived by Madame du Deffand; but her 
society, as has already been shown, was latterly only the shadow of 
what it once had been : the ill-temper of the selfish, blind, old wo- 
man, repelled even her most intimate and attached friends. The 
influence of Madame Geoffrin was great in one sense, and inconside- 
rable in another. It was extensive, but not deep. To assist her 
friends, to give them a social tone, to impart to them her keen prac- 



160 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

tical knowledge of the world, such was her object, apart from her 
personal views of securing general esteem and good-will. She suc- 
ceeded in effecting her aim, and went no further : she repressed the 
imprudence of some views expressed by her proteges; but abstained 
from substituting for them any opinions of her own : she felt her 
deficiencies, and acted wisely. At the same time she proved an 
auxiliary of considerable value to the Encyclopedistes, for the fur- 
therance of whose work she is said to have spent very large sums. 

The " Encyclopedic," from a purely scientific undertaking, had 
then assumed the tone and importance of a party affair. This was 
chiefly owing to the injudicious opposition of Government, by whom 
it was forbidden, and in spite of whom it was universally read. In- 
flated by their success, the authors of the "Encyclopedic" henceforth 
assumed the most sectarian and intolerant tone : they literally crushed 
all those who ventured to oppose them or their doctrines. Gilbert, 
the unhappy and gifted poet, not only disdained their applause, but 
had the audacity to expose their ridicules in his admirable satires. 
This independence proved fatal to him : persecuted and reviled, he 
closed his brief and troubled life in an hospital ; whilst hundreds of 
men without his genius, were flattered and admired in every fashion- 
able drawing-room. 

With Madame Geoffrin, as we have already said, closed the bureaux 
d'esprit. It may now, perhaps, be asked, what influence did those 
assemblies exercise over the eighteenth century? This influence 
depended greatly on the individual characters of the women by 
whom it was possessed. Clear and analytic with Madame de Tencin, 
artistic under Madame de la Popeliniere, brilliant and selfish when 
exercised by Madame du Deffand, eloquent when by Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse, and half kind half worldly with Madame Geoffrin, it 
was eminently a social influence j but, unless in the sense that society 
reacts on literature, it was not literary. 

The women of the eighteenth century rendered society singularly 
polished and elegant; but they could not prevent it from being 
tainted by the evil tendencies which such large and artificial meet- 
ings as those they presided over must necessarily have. The variety 
of pleasures necessary to amuse so many individuals, bred habits of 
frivolous thought and ill-concealed ennui. Every subject was treated 
with heartless levity : enthusiasm, serious thought, or generous im- 
pulses, were alike proscribed, and withered by the cold, worldly 
spirit which then prevailed. It was natural that the sense of the 
ridiculous should be strongly developed amongst individuals, who, 
after all, had little else to do than to laugh good-naturedly at their 
friends; for spite or hatred were feelings far too strong and deep for 
them. Occasionally, such beings as Madame du Deffand, with her 
open rancour, or Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, with her fervour and 



INFLUENCE OP THE BUREAUX D'ESPRIT. 161 

enthusiasm, would Tbreak through the bounds of this artificial world; 
and were almost equally blamed, by those who could see no greater 
crime than to infringe the state of polite indifference which they had 
fixed upon as the supreme bon ton. 

At the same time, and with all their defects, these assemblies had 
a singular power in arousing the intellect, and that vivacity of thought, 
in itself a very indifferent accomplishment, but which is so often 
mistaken for a higher faculty. It was to this their awakening power 
on the mind that Rousseau alluded, when he exclaimed : — " Are you 
in doubt whether you have or not any genius? go to Paris, and if 
you have got any you will soon feel it fermenting in your breast." 
And yet this might more truly be said of ambition than of genius ! 
Where many men meet together, and individualities merge into one 
another and fade away, a tone of commonplace feeling pervades the 
whole mass; general harmony is the result: and it may be well 
that it should be thus, but the home of genius is not there. Self- 
communion and solitude are its daily bread: for what is genius 
but a great and strongly-marked individuality — but an original, 
creative being, standing forth alone amidst the undistinguishable 
throng of our everyday world? Genius is a lonely power; it is not 
communicative; it is not the gift of a crowd; it is not a reflection 
cast from without upon the soul. It is essentially an inward light, 
diffusing its clear and glorious radiance over the external world. It 
is a broad flood pouring freely forth its deep waters ; but, with its 
source, for ever hidden from human ken. It is the creator, and 
not the creature : it calls forth glorious and immortal shapes ; but 
it is called into being by none — save G-od. 

What had such a power to do with bureaux d'esprit and drawing- 
room praise ? What could it gain, even from the exquisite polish 
they gave, but heavy golden fetters ? To encourage talent, especially 
when displayed externally; to favour the development of so-called 
philosophy; to aid in the task of social destruction, even whilst 
they made society more elegant and accomplished, was the real task 
of the bureaux d'esprit: they fulfilled it; but beyond this their 
power did not extend. Few coteries have ever done so much : none 
could now do more. 



14* 



1G2 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Madame de Pompadour. — Her political power and genera] influence. — Ma- 
dame du Marchais and the Economists. — Madame du Barry. — Death of 
Louis XV. 

However degrading for society it may be to confess it, it is 
nevertheless true, that, besides the democratic influence of the 
bureaux d' esprit, there existed another power in French society 
during the eighteenth century — the power of royal mistresses ; 
exercised, not because they were clever or intelligent women, but 
because they were the acknowledged favourites of a profligate mo- 
narch. 

On the death of Madame de Chateauroux, Richelieu, anxious to 
console the king for her loss, and to have the honour of procuring 
him another mistress as attractive, went to seek the beautiful Ma- 
dame de Flavacour, and offered her the post which had been suc- 
cessively occupied by her four sisters. She coldly listened to his 
proposals, and merely replied, " I prefer, to what you offer me, the 
esteem of my contemporaries." Several other ladies of equal vir- 
tue were found, even at the court of Louis XV. ; but too many 
eagerly sought the disgraceful honour a simple bourgeoise was des- 
tined to win. 

Before the king left Versailles for his army in Flanders, the keen 
eye of Madame de Chateauroux had noticed a singularly beautiful 
woman who always placed herself in the path of Louis XV. when- 
ever he hunted in the forest of Senart. The instinct of jealousy 
led her to suspect in this unknown lady (for she did not belong to 
the court) a future rival. Her surmise was correct ; and, when the 
king's grief for her loss was somewhat abated, Madame de Chateau- 
roux was succeeded in the post of royal favourite by the intriguing 
Madame le Xormand d'Etiolles, better known as Madame de Pom- 
padour. According to some accounts, Jeannette Poisson, the daugh- 
ter of a Parisian butcher, had been early destined by her parents 
to the rank of the king's mistress. Circumstances not favouring 
this project, she was married to a young and wealthy financier. She 
shone for a while in the Parisian circles ; till having, by her private 
intrigues, succeeded in securing the king's favour, she suddenly de- 
serted her husband, and, residing openly in the palace of Versailles, 



MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 163 

she received the badge of her degradation in the title of Marchioness 
of Pompadour. M. d'Etiolles, disconsolate at the loss of his wife, 
whom he idolized, vainly offered to forgive her everything if she 
wonld only come back. She refused in the most peremptory 
manner to return to his house. Unprincipled and aspiring, she 
not only intended to rale Louis XV. completely, but, though both 
the queen and her own husband were still living, she even enter- 
tained the ambitious hope of becoming the king's wife at some 
future period, and thus rivalling the power and fame of Madame de 
Main tenon. 

Besides the exquisite grace and beauty of her person, the love- 
liness and regularity of her features, and that ever-varying expression 
which gave them an irresistible charm, Madame de Pompadour pos- 
sessed all the versatility of talent, and the meretricious arts, neces- 
sary to the favourite sultana of a king already blase in his tastes. 
She not only played and sang admirably, but danced with singular 
grace and elegance. Her acting was equal to that of the most cele- 
brated actresses of the day; her conversation easy, brilliant, and 
fascinating. From the time that she became the king's mistress to 
the epoch of her death, to please and amuse her royal lover was the 
sole study of her life. Lest even her admirable beauty should lose 
its fascinations, she was ever surprising Louis XV. by presenting it 
to his gaze under a new aspect. Sometimes she appeared before him 
clad as a peasant girl, assuming all the simplicity and rustic grace 
of this character. She took with equal ease the voluptuous appear- 
ance of a languishing Yenus, or the proud beauty of a Diana. To 
these disguises often succeeded the modest garb of a nun, when, 
with affected humility, and downcast eyes, she came to meet the 
king. What was such a life but one of endless, degrading slavery ? 

The character of Madame de Pompadour may be traced in her 
conduct towards her husband. She was cold, selfish, and ambitious. 
She had no sooner secured a firm hold on the king's heart than she 
resolved to govern the State. Her penetration showed her that 
Louis XY. might not love her long, but that, if she could render 
herself necessary to him, her position would nevertheless remain 
safe. It was for this that she did not scruple to encourage and 
assist his obscure intrigues, from which she felt that she had little 
to fear. The foundation of that infamous establishment where 
Louis XY. kept young girls, whom he had in many instances caused 
to be forcibly taken from their parents, is even attributed to Madame 
de Pompadour. From the first, she resolved to be, not only the 
king's mistress, but also his p-ime minister. The indolent monarch 
willingly yielded up to her the reins of the State. Madame de Pom- 
padour soon acquired great tact in the management of affairs ; but 
she was reckless and unprincipled, and her political power hastened 



164 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

the ruin of monarchy, whilst it increased the evils of France. She 
abhorred the very name of Fleury, and did her best to destroy the 
good which the cardinal had effected. The men whom she success- 
ively called to govern the country with her, Bernis and the Duke of 
Choiseul, were too completely her tools to counteract her folly, had 
they been desirous of doing so. Bernis was> the same abbe to whom 
Fleury had refused a living, and who had prophetically replied, 
" J'attendrai I" On learning the favour of Madame de Pompadour, 
with whom he was slightly acquainted, he went to see her, and 
repeated to her some flowery verses in her praise. Madame de 
Pompadour, greatly pleased, gave him a pension, and received him 
into her intimacy. He ingratiated himself so much into her favour 
by his gaiety and versifying talents, that, after making him an am- 
bassador, she ended by raising him to the post of minister. The 
conduct of Bernis was such as might have been expected from 
"Babet Bouquetiere du Parnasse" (the name his rosy cheeks had 
earned him from Voltaire, whilst he was only a needy abbe). The 
most important negotiations were intrusted to men of his own stamp, 
and whose sole recommendation was that of having pleased Madame 
de Pompadour, by talents similar to those which had won him her 
favour. 

France thus lost the alliance of Prussia. It is also asserted, that 
the ridicule with which Frederic II. thought fit to speak of Bernis' 
poetry, and the appellation of Cotillon II. which he bestowed on 
Madame de Pompadour — in allusion to her having succeeded Cotillon 
I., that is, Madame de Chateauroux — deeply irritated these two 
powerful personages. Through neglect, intentional or not, they at 
least allowed themselves to be forestalled by England in the alliance 
of Prussia. When these two powers had concluded the treaty of 
Westminster, Madame de Pompadour was induced, by her own per- 
sonal vanity, to engage France in an alliance with Austria. Maria 
Theresa, learning her favourable intentions, lost no time in writing 
her a friendly letter, in which she named the royal courtesan her 
chere amie. Filled with pride at this mark of distinction, Madame 
de Pompadour found it easy to work on the feelings of Louis XV. 
His personal dislike and jealousy of the Prussian monarch, whose 
great talents seemed to cast a reproach on his own degrading life, 
made him lend a willing ear to the proposal of allying himself with 
Austria. A treaty was secretly drawn up in Babiole — Madame de 
Pompadour's country-house — between Bernis and Stahrenberg. 
This treaty — so fatal to the best interests of the nation; — created uni- 
versal indignation and astonishment. Austria had for several cen- 
turies been the open enemy of France ; and, only a few years pre- 
viously, the French had done everything to precipitate from her 
throne the empress-queen they were now bound to support. Then, 






MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 165 

it is true, Madame de Chateauroux wished to have the glory of 
making an emperor, and now Madame de Pompadour had been 
called the "dear friend" of Maria Theresa. 

These were a few amongst the great motives which decided the 
Seven Years' war, covered the military glory of France with shame, 
and led to the fatal marriage of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. 
Madame de Pompadour had also other reasons of her own for her 
conduct in this matter. It was war which secured her power : as 
long as it lasted, her talents rendered her necessary to the king, and 
she need fear no rival. All the European powers, who had adopted 
her line of policy towards Frederic II., were also interested that she 
should continue to be at the head of affairs. If Louis XV. had then 
taken another mistress, with sympathies in favour of Prussia, instead 
of Austria, this great event might have changed the aspect of Europe. 
But the chains of habit, far more than those of love, riveted him to 
Madame de Pompadour. Conscious of her power, the proud and 
imperious favourite assumed the style of a queen. Her femmes de 
chambre were ladies of noble birth, and she caused her steward to 
be made a knight of the order of Saint Louis. Her esquire, the 
Chevalier d'Henin, a relative of the Princes of Chimay, and a mem- 
ber of one of the most noble families of the empire, might be seen 
walking respectfully by the side of her sedan chair, with her cloak 
on his arm, in order to cover her shoulders with it as soon as she 
should alight. He accompanied her, for the same purpose, when 
she went visiting, and waited for her in the antechamber, if it was 
necessary to do so. 

It would have been well for France if Madame de Pompadour 
had remained satisfied with such marks of distinction. But this un- 
principled woman, who named bishops and generals as well as min- 
isters — who gave instructions to ambassadors, and addressed them 
in the first person plural, as though she had become identified 
with royalty or France — asserted her power, and seemed doomed to 
cause the misfortunes of her country, by her unhappy and capricious 
choice of men. Richelieu and Soubise were not only favoured by 
her in every respect, but, to the military shame of France, entrusted 
with the highest posts in the army. She was, however, keenly alive 
to the disgrace their errors brought down on her judgment, and un- 
reasonably charged them with the consequences of her folly. When 
De Bernis ventured to oppose a line of policy so fatal to France as 
that which she adopted, Madame de Pompadour greatly resented this 
act of independence, and obliged him to withdraw from the ministry; 
reminding him, with a taunt she had no right to inflict, that another 
sort of talent than that of versifying was necessary in order to govern 
a nation. Cardinal de Bernis — for the favour of Madame de Pompa- 
dour had gained him this dignity — retired to Rome, and was sue- 



1GG WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ceeded in the management of affairs by Stainville, afterwards Duke 
of Choiseul, and another of the creatures of the royal favourite. 

Clever, though too light and volatile — haughty, and yet supple — 
the Duke of Choiseul had early learned the art of ingratiating him- 
self in famale favour; thus carrying into practice the advice of 
Madame de Montmorin to her son : " If you wish to succeed in 
France, fall in love with all the women. " His light, caustic wit, 
and skilful flattery, compensated for the insignificance of his per- 
sonal appearance. The universal, and not very disinterested desire, 
which then existed, of making gallantry a means of success in 
ambition, had reacted on the character of the men by whom it was 
employed. Women are excellent judges of a certain species of in- 
dividual merit. An elegant address, natural manners, taste, witj 
and eloquence, generally find favour with them. The superficial 
nature of their education renders them less capable of appreciating 
gravity of thought and solidity of judgment. The men whose task 
and interest it was to please women, naturally adopted the manners 
most likely to accomplish this purpose. But, though female influ- 
ence thus gave an undue importance to mere externals, the frivolous 
tone of society, and the tendency which therefore existed to govern 
it by the laws of ridicule, were not exclusively the work of women: 
these characteristics of the last century may more fairly be attributed 
to the want of political rights, which induced men to win by favour 
and intrigue what they might have sought openly in a free country. 

Whilst Madame de Pompadour governed the State, Louis XV. 
continued his life of indolence and shameless profligacy. He was 
by far too clear-sighted not to perceive that monarchy was declining, 
and that a great change must necessarily take place in the condition 
of the nation ; but not even this knowledge could rouse him from 
his selfish apathy. He felt tolerably certain that no serious disturb- 
ance would occur during his lifetime : " the rest concerns my suc- 
cessor/' he. often observed. It did, indeed, concern the hapless 
Louis XVI. The prestige which had so long environed Louis XV. 
vanished ; for his people saw what sort of a king was on the throne. 
Louis XV. the beloved, was now named thus only in the almanacks, 
published every year : the endearing epithet had long been erased 
from every heart in France. When he appeared, in public, he was 
received with ominous silence, — contempt and hatred were the secret 
feelings of those who gazed on him. A life of voluptuous indul- 
gence soon bred satiety : ennui, as well as a feeling of inquisitive- 
ness natural to unoccupied minds, made Louis XV. seek for amuse- 
ment in an acquaintance with all the scandalous news of the day. 
To know the minutest details of the private life of his courtiers and 
ministers, as well as to be informed of all the intrigues that took 
place in Paris, was one of the greatest pleasures and most earnest 



MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 167 

occupations of the king. For this purpose he kept a private police 
of his own ; being too suspicious to trust entirely to the lieutenant 
of police. This functionary was, however, summoned every Sun- 
day to the presence of the king, with whom he spent several hours. 
He then laid before his majesty every fact of importance or interest 
which numerous spies, of every rank, had discovered in the course 
of the week. It was also his task to read to him the extracts from 
letters which had been unsealed and read by the post-office authori- 
ties, — an infamous custom, first introduced under Louis XIY. by 
the minister Louvois. Louis XV. sometimes communicated to his 
ministers these extracts from the private correspondence of his sub- 
jects. The Duke of Choiseul was often favoured thus; but, being 
naturally indiscreet, he divulged amongst his acquaintances matters 
affecting the honour of individuals, or exposing them to scorn and 
ridicule. The king, besides the information he thus gained, also 
heard every morning five classes of police reports, concerning the 
princes of the blood, the courtiers, bishops, ministers, clergymen, 
women of dissolute life, &c. 

Louis XV. also indulged in another amusement. He always 
affected to separate the king from Louis of Bourbon ; and whilst he 
allowed his mistresses and ministers to give their instructions to the 
ambassadors he sent to foreign courts, he employed secret agents of 
his own to counteract their designs by petty artifices : the pleasure 
of teazing those to whom he had yielded up his power being the 
sole object of this contemptible conduct. The truth was that the 
king had grown profoundly ennuye and selfish. Life had lost its 
illusions for him, and he was annoyed by the sight of pleasure or 
happiness in others. A sardonic smile disfigured his still handsome 
features: to inflict pain or annoyance had become a real pleasure 
for him. If a courtier affected a youthful tone no longer in accord- 
ance with his years, the king, whose memory was unerring in this 
respect, never failed to remind him of his age : he was the first to 
detect in others wrinkles and all the signs of declining years. To 
those who were afflicted with illness, the king spoke of their end as 
inevitable, or at least as approaching. Often, when he travelled 
with Madame de Pomjmdour, he caused the carriage to stop near a 
churchyard, in order to learn if it contained any newly-made grave. 
Notwithstanding the horror such subjects gave her, the king de- 
lighted to speak to his mistress of death. Like many voluptuaries, 
he was of a melancholy, and even morbid disposition. 

The court over which Louis XV. and Madame de Pompadour 
presided was fully worthy of them. That confusion which is inse- 
parable from a great convulsion reigned there, as well as in every 
other portion of society. The old noblesse were cast into the shade 
by a new and more wealthy aristocracy, sprung from the bourgeoisie, 



168 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

and which bought lands, vassals, and feudal titles. When ranks 
are thus displaced in a nation, owing to the decay of one class and 
the rise of another, it is a proof that the institutions are no longer 
fitted to the age ; and from that moment they necessarily become 
despised and unjust. A greater feeling of equality sprang from this 
state of things j though, as it did not result from the natural tone 
of society, but, on the contrary, from its corruption, it only proved 
another sign of evil. 

Both the new and the old nobility joined in the common pursuit 
of pleasure before their final fall. Bad taste and frivolousness 
marked their amusements. Titled ladies, who eagerly sought the 
favour of being allowed a seat in the presence of Madame de Pom- 
padour, visited in secret the popular ball of the Porcherons-, or 
amused themselves by breaking plates and glasses in obscure caba- 
rets, assuming the free and reckless tone of men. Their husbands 
in the mean while embroidered at home, or paced the stately galle- 
ries of Louis XIV. at Versailles — a little painted figure of cardboard 
in one hand, whilst with the other they drew the string which put 
it in motion. This preposterous amusement even spread throughout 
the whole nation, and grave magistrates were to be met in the streets 
playing, like the rest, with their pantins* 

The general degeneracy of the times was acknowledged even by 
those who shared in it. The old nobles ascribed it to that fatal 
evil — the want of female chastity. Never, indeed, had this social 
stain been so universal or so great. ." Had our race remained pure 
from the intermixture of plebeian blood," they argued, in their 
pride, " we could not have fallen so low." 

With all this profligacy, there was mingled a strong philosophic 
tone. Towards the close of Louis XV/s reign, and to the king's 
infinite displeasure, the Anglomania assumed a marked popularity. 
The ingenious possessors of " pantins" visited England, in order, as 
they said, " to learn how to think.". The progress of this spirit was 
visible even in those whose position bound them most to resist it. 
Madame Louise, the daughter of Louis XV., when she had deter- 
mined on embracing a monastic life, chose the Carmelite order, 
because, in this order, there is no perpetual abbess, but a superior 
elected every three years : a custom which the daughter of an abso- 
lute king thought more in accordance with the spirit of equality. 
Her brother, the dauphin, and who was considered the foe of the 
philosophers, whilst he approved the condemnation of Rousseau's 

* This childish folly was satirized in the following epigram : — 

"Dun peuple frivole et volage, 
Pantin fut la divinite. 
Faut-il etre s'il cherissait l'image 
Dont il est la realite ?" 



MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 169 

" Emile," observed of the u Contrat Social," — u The case is different 
with this work ; it only treats of the rights of kings, and these can 
be discussed/' When institutions begin to know their own weak- 
ness, is not their hour nigh ? The royal and aristocratic element 
was declining, whilst the popular and philosophic power rose in 
the ascendant; and both parties felt that it was so. 

Whilst monarchy was thus swiftly and surely undermined by 
society itself, the weak and vacillating power seemed anxious to 
hasten its own ruin. The mass of "the nation had become more 
intellectually enlightened, and more immoral than it had ever yet 
been ; and yet the court persisted in its weak, despotic course of con- 
duct. G-overnment alternately yielded to the spirit of the age, or 
vainly sought to control it. Scepticism was abroad, and practical 
intolerance was still exercised by the clergy. State prisons were 
filled with untried captives, the victims of favourites and royal mis- 
tresses, at the very time when democratic philosophy was most popu- 
lar. The right of a nation to govern itself was already discussed, 
yet Choiseul ministered to the extravagance of the king and his mis- 
tress, as though the wealth of the kingdom were their own private 
property. At the same time, no one was unconscious that a great 
crisis was inevitable. The subject was even discussed in the draw- 
ing-room of Madame de Pompadour, and in the hearing of her con- 
fidential attendant, Madame du Hausset, who thus alludes to this 
remarkable fact : — 

u i This kingdom/ said Mirabeau (the father of the celebrated 
tribune), ' is in a deplorable state. There is neither national energy 
nor the only substitute for it — money.' ' It can only be regenerated/ 
said La Riviere, ' by a conquest like that of China, or by some great 
internal convulsion : but woe to those who live to see that ! The 
French people do not^lo things by halves.'. These words made me 
tremble, and I hastened out of the room." 

Madame de Pompadour herself was aware that the actual system 
was doomed to perish, but satisfied with her favourite exclamation, — 
" Apres nous, le deluge," — Let the flood come when we are gone, — 
she did nothing to effect a radical change. Her caprices increased 
the evils which were ruining the State : favourites and ministers suc- 
ceeded one another under her sway ) they knew the unstable tenure 
of their power, and hastened with their creatures to drain the re- 
sources of the country before their day was past. But if Madame 
do Pompadour's guilt was great, so was the retribution by which it 
was attended. 

The most rigid moralist could not have desired a severer punish- 
ment for the king's mistress than that brought down upon her by 
her own vices. The last years of this woman who governed France 
— who received more than queenly honours from the courtiers, and 
15 



170 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

who lived surrounded by all the pleasures boundless wealth can give 
— were literally poisoned and abridged by a soul-devouring ennui. 
The death of her daughter by her husband, and whom she had 
destined to marry one of the first nobles in the land, filled her with 
grief. The loss of her beauty, and the increasing indifference of the 
king, added to her melancholy. She often declared that, for a hand- 
some woman, death itself was better than to see her charms fading 
away. 

With all her vices, Madame de Pompadour was not insensible 
to the unhappy state of France. She saw and lamented that very 
degeneracy of the times which she had aided, and to which she owed 
her elevation. She had imbibed enough of the philosophic spirit to 
perceive that the country was on the brink of ruin ; and not even 
her selfish exclamation, " After us, the flood," — could always stifle 
the voice of her conscience. 

It was no slight addition to her grief, that the general hatred of 
the nation ascribed to her all the misery of France. Every unpopular 
measure of the cabinet; every reverse in war, was laid to the detested 
name of Pompadour. If to these causes of melancholy be added 
general ill-health, and the consciousness that habit and pity were the 
only feelings the king now felt for her, it need scarcely be wondered 
that Madame de Pompadour should term the life she led "a con- 
tinual death." At the same time, she had not enough courage or 
principle to leave the scene of her splendid misery. Pride kept her 
chained to her throne, and made her reign to the last. It is, how- 
ever, probable that if Madame de Pompadour had lived longer, she 
might have edified the world with the sight of her conversion. The 
unaffected piety of the injured queen inspired her with involuntary 
admiration and respect for religion. Very different, indeed, were 
the declining years of Marie Lecsinska and those of the Marchioness 
of Pompadour. The patient and pious queen laid her sufferings at 
the foot of the Cross : insulted by her husband and his mistresses j 
neglected by the courtiers; deeply afflicted by the loss of her chil- 
dren, whom she had loved most tenderly, she still found in religion 
the courage necessary to support her grief, and effectual consolations 
in the practice of a boundless benevolence. 

Ennui, shame, and remorse, marked the last days of Madame de 
Pompadour. The king, indeed, was induced by compassion to pay 
her the greatest attention during her last illness. She was, contrary 
to the usual etiquette in such cases, allowed to die in Versailles — 
the exclusive privilege of royalty. Her will remained, to the last, 
the law of France, and she issued forth orders even from her death- 
bed. But scarcely had she ceased to exist when her remains were 
unceremoniously hurried out of the palace, and the king, looking 
from his window, coolly remarked that the marquise had rainy 



MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 171 

weather for this her last journey. It was to be thus honoured and 
thus loved that Madame de Pompadour had sacrificed all that woman 
should hold most dear and revered. 

Though the social influence of Madame de Pompadour was far 
from being great or extended, it is worthy of consideration. The 
mistresses of Louis XV. had more direct political action than those 
of his predecessor, but their general power on society was infinitely 
less. Notwithstanding her talents and the good education she had 
received, Madame de Pompadour never lost the tone of a bourgeoise. 
She gave evident proofs of vulgarity in the coarse nicknames which 
she bestowed on her female friends. She was imitated in this by 
the king, who called his daughters by appellations little remarkable 
for either delicacy or euphony. The taste of Madame de Pompadour 
was essentially bad : as her admiration of Bernis' verses would 
suffice to show, did not the school of art she encouraged prove it more 
clearly still. The shepherdess in hoops of Watteau and Boucher, 
and the corrupt style which distinguished the fashions in dress 
and furniture of the period, owe much to her patronage. She ex- 
aggerated the defects of her contemporaries, and never endeavoured 
to substitute for them anything of pure artistic beauty. She had, 
however, the merit of having led to the establishment of the manu- 
factory of Sevres porcelain. 

Madame de Pompadour was desirous of securing a literary influ- 
ence ; which, vith her power of giving places and pensions, would 
have been an easy matter, had she known how to act. She, indeed 
pensioned such second-rate authors as Marmonte.l, Duclos, and Ber- 
nis ; but though Voltaire unblushingly protested that he was devoted 
to her, because it was his duty, as a good citizen, to be so — apparently 
considering the existence and position of a royal mistress as a sort 
of national institution — she did not care to influence the king in his 
favour. Louis XV. always disliked that intellectual monarch, whose 
reign, he felt, eclipsed his own. Both he and Madame de Pompa- 
dour were so blind to their real interests as to neglect the power 
they might have secured, until it was beyond their grasp, and fell 
into the hands of Parisian ladies and farmers-general. Madame de 
Pompadour did, indeed, attempt to tame, as she said, Rousseau, and 
accordingly sent a hundred louis to the proud and irritable author. 
He declined her present in a letter of such haughtiness that she 
was wounded to the quick, and protested she would have nothing 
more to do with that owl. The truth was, that the literary and 
philosophic party expected more than pensions from Madame de 
Pompadour ; the time was gone when they could be so easily satis- 
fied : they aimed at receiving from her no less than the same degree 
of flattery and consideration awarded to them in every Parisian 
circle. 



172 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

But, though she could venture to direct the destinies of France, 
Madame de Pompadour shrank from the responsibility of encourag- 
ing, too openly, the formidable philosophic power : at the same time, 
she committed the great error of bestowing on that power, the sort 
of encouragement which entitles the receiver to expect more. 
Through her favourite medical attendant, Quesnay, she often com- 
municated with Diderot, D'Alembert, Duclos, Helvetius, Turgot, 
and Buffon — freely mingling with them when they visitedQuesnay's 
entresol in Versailles, but never asking them up into her own 
drawing-room. The men whom Frederick and Catharine had accus- 
tomed to the praise of crowned heads, were not likely to be highly 
flattered by the indirect notice of Madame de Pompadour. Another 
error which she committed, was to endeavour to place Crebillou, the 
tragic poet, above Voltaire. Crebillon was poor; she wanted a 
poet to patronize and exalt; she chose him. Voltaire, deeply irri- 
tated, never forgave her this offence. Madame du Maine, who, in 
matters of taste, was still influential, zealously defended her former 
protege; and Madame de Pompadour had the mortification of per- 
ceiving that, though no one denied Crebillon's tragic power, Vol- 
taire, in spite of all she might do, was still the great idol of the 
age. 

Madame cle Pompadour was more successful when, entering into 
the views of the philosophers, she aided them in the expulsion of 
the # Jesuits. Notwithstanding the disinclination of the king, and 
the opposition of the whole royal family, she succeeded, with the 
aid of her creature, Choiseul, in banishing the Jesuits from France, 
ten years before their order was expelled from the other European 
states. It has been said that she was actuated in this by a motive 
of personal animosity; and, though the assertion is not, perhaps, 
sufficiently proved, there is nothing in the life and character of 
Madame de Pompadour, to justify the belief that she acted from a 
feeling of principle. The expulsion of the Jesuits was a very serious 
blow given to religion in France. Choiseul, the philosophers, and 
the Parliament, united their efforts to those of Madame de Pompa- 
dour, in order to carry a measure they all desired, though through 
widely different motives. The Parliament unwisely yielded to their 
old prejudices, as Jansenists, and eagerly aided the philosophers; for 
whom, on other occasions, their only feeling was one of bitter 
hostility. 

Whatever opinion may be held of the Jesuits — and it is not our 
intention to discuss here the merits of this celebrated order — their 
expulsion was certainly not justified then. They had possessed no 
real power in France since Louis XIV. and Madame de Maintenon; 
they were, indeed, protected by the Queen, Marie Lecsinska; but 
she was utterly without influence. It was precisely because they 



MADAME DE POMPADOUR. 173 

were so weak, that they were attacked. Institutions perish when 
the strength against which violence would have been of no avail has 
long been spent. It is not when they stand in the evil pride of 
their power; but it is when they grow feeble and decayed, that the 
memory of past hatred rises up against them, and their fall seems 
then less an act of justice than one of vengeance. 

Madame de Pompadour was less successful when she attempted to 
exercise her power in favour of the parliaments, who were then 
openly protected by Choiseul. " Do not mention them !" once 
hastily observed Louis XV., starting up from the apathy with which 
he usually acceded to the plans of his mistress, u I tell you they 
are an assembly of republicans." Madame de Pompadour inter- 
fered with more success when she encouraged the doctrines of 
political economy: one of the results of the new philosophy. She 
did not, indeed, modify these doctrines by any original views of her 
own, but she did much by favouring their free development. 

The deep, heart-rending misery of the working classes had at 
length forced itself on public attention. Persons of every rank 
began to consider the best means of alleviating a wretchedness to 
which even the king and Madame de Pompadour could not remain 
wholly insensible. Quesnay, their favourite surgeon, was one of 
the most popular economists : his views were inserted in the " Ency- 
clopedic," with the chief writers of which he was on intimate terms. 
He had also many influential friends among men of rank : one -of 
his adherents was Mirabeau the elder, that "friend of man" who 
wrote twenty volumes of philanthropic works, and behaved like a 
fierce tyrant to all those over whom he had power. Louis XV. 
took some interest in his physician's system, and indulged in the 
novel amusement of causing his essays to be printed, revising the 
proofs with his own royal hand. G-ournay opposed the views of 
Quesnay by a system based on wholly different principles. This 
difference of opinion led to a bitter controversy between their 
respective partisans. The women, as usual, took an active share in 
the matter : most of them imperiously proscribed in their circle any 
views but those they had chosen to adopt; those who would wil- 
lingly have remained indifferent on such subjects were not allowed 
to do so; so deeply and universally felt was the necessity of some 
radical change. 

None showed more zeal in the cause of political economy than 
the pretty and agreeable Madame du Marchais, a relative of Madame 
de Pompadour's, and the wife of the dauphin's valet de chambre. 
Though this lady held a somewhat subordinate position, her con- 
nection with Madame de Pompadour, and the great charm of her 
conversation, drew around her the most eminent men of the day, 
and rendered her little apartment in the palace of Versailles the 

15* 



174 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

rendezvous of the most intellectual society of those times. There 
was much in Madame du Marchais, afterwards Madame d'Angi- 
villiers, to fascinate and attract. She was diminutive in person, 
but pretty and graceful as a fairy. Her mind was remarkable for 
two high and rare qualities; an extreme clearness of understanding 
and a complete impartiality, even with regard to those subjects 
which interested her most. Madame du Marchais was thus admi- 
rably adapted to the part she had taken on herself as expounder of 
the rival systems of the day. The elegant perspicuity of her lan- 
guage, the precision with which she conveyed, in a few words, the 
substance of whatever treatise or discourse she wished to condense 
for the benefit of her hearers, were invaluable to her friends, at an 
epoch when the fate of the most important questions often hung on 
the manner in which they were discussed. The comprehensiveness 
of her intellect enabled Madame clu Marchais to abstract herself 
whenever she pleased from ordinary cares, without neglecting them 
in the main. Her mind was stored with all that had been written 
for or against the science she favoured; she was an authority to be 
consulted with perfect safety, for no party spirit ever disfigured the 
clearness and calmness of her statements. The letters of Turgot 
to Terrai, Necker's treatises, the dialogues of Galiani, and Morellet's 
refutations were alike read and consulted by the dispassionate 
Madame du Marchais. 

Though she saw persons of every class, Madame du Marchais 
chiefly received academicians and political economists. La Harpe, 
Diderot, Marmontel, D'Alembert, Duclos, Thomas, and Quesnay 
constantly met at her house. Such was her influence that she not 
only named academicians whenever vacant seats occurred in the 
academy, but she had even the occult power of directing the motions 
of that body; whom she once caused to propose an eulogy of Sully 
for the "concours" of eloquence. The essay of Thomas had the 
prize; but the triumph he obtained was less his own than that of 
Madame du Marchais's friend, Quesnay, whose principles he had 
developed under the name of Sully. Never, indeed, was literature 
less free and independent than in those times, when even the fairy 
tales of Duclos took a philosophic turn. 

The inclinations and great talents of Madame du Marchais en- 
titled her to do for political economy in France what Madame du 
Chatelet had effected for Leibnitz and Newton before her : such, in- 
deed, was her aim, and she devoted her whole energies and atten- 
tion to the purpose of aiding the progress of doctrines she believed 
calculated to rescue her country from its unhappy condition. Time 
showed that deeper changes than those it was in the power of politi- 
cal economy to effect for France were needful; but the aim of 
Madame du Marchais was not the less noble or pure. Madame du 



DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN. 175 

Deffand, incapable of appreciating anything elevated or unselfish, 
sought to chase her ever-renewing ennui by attacking all the econo- 
mists with the utmost coarseness and vehemence. She partook, 
however, of Madame du Marehais's excellent suppers, in company 
with the hated tribe, but did not fail to turn her friend into ridicule 
on every favourable occasion. Undeterred by her satirical remarks, 
Madame du Marchais steadily persevered in her object. Many 
women of those times shone more than she did by the exercise of 
frivolous talents, but none had an aim so disinterested and so useful. 

The favour, and consequently the power of the Duke of Choiseul 
continued even after the death of Madame de Pompadour. His 
light frivolous manner of treating the most important state matters 
amused without ever wearying the king. As long as Choiseul re- 
mained minister, the philosophic party — especially that worldly 
epicurian portion which met at the house of Madame du Deffand — 
raised their patron to the skies, and enjoyed a considerable degree 
of his countenance. Thus encouraged, they expressed their opinions 
with still greater freedom than they had been in the habit of mani- 
festing. The death of Louis XV.'s only son was also a great sub- 
ject of triumph to the philosophers. They supposed the dauphin, 
as a moral and religious prince, to be their natural foe : he was, 
indeed, the foe of their errors; but he had a virtue of which they 
knew nothing, and that was a singular tolerance for opinions the 
most opposed to his own. But he was the partisan of the Jesuits, and 
very much opposed to the power of Choiseul : these were the real 
causes of the dislike of the philosophers. He died at Compiegne, 
where the court was delayed until his decease, which was hourly 
expected, should have taken place. The prince, who remained 
sensible to the last, could see from the window of his room the pre- 
parations which all the courtiers were making for their approaching 
departure. "They are getting impatient; it is time for me to be 
gone," he observed to his doctor, with a bitter smile. The agony 
of this last hour was, however, soothed by the devotedness of the 
dauphiness: a pure, noble-minded woman, who waited on her hus- 
band, through his long and painful illness, with unwearied love, 
and who died of grief for his loss. The death of his son was 
announced to the king by his eldest grandson, the Duke of Berri 
(Louis XVI.), being introduced into his presence as Monseigneur 
le Dauphin. This event appeared to rouse the sovereign from his 
usual apathy. "Poor France!" said he, with a deep sigh, "thou 
hast now got a king of fifty, and a dauphin of eleven \" And as he 
cast a sad and troubled look on the child before him, the future 
woes of his posterity seemed for a while to be revealed to, and to 
appal, the guilty soul of Louis XV. 

Choiseul thought himself fairly consolidated in his power by the 



176 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

death of tlie dauphin. The king was getting old, and it seemed 
scarcely probable that he would take another acknowledged mistress. 
Such was not the wish of the handsome and unprincipled court 
ladies; who, on the death of Madame de Pompadour, strove to 
succeed her in the favour of the monarch. Their blandishments 
were, however, lavished in vain : a common courtesan was destined 
to succeed the bourgeoise, and to rule over the court of France. 

All the sermons that could be preached on the increasing im- 
morality and shamelessness of the times, would never speak so 
eloquently as the love of Louis XV. for Madame du Barry. The 
first mistresses of the king had been comparatively modest women : 
they were highly born, clever, and educated ladies, who knew how 
to sin with a proper regard for the bienseances : some of them even 
possessed high qualities, and strove to make a worthy use of a cor- 
rupt power. Madame de Pompadour, a bourgeoise and a parvenue, 
though she served the passions of the king in an infamous manner, 
and was deservedly hated for her insolence and tyranny, was still an 
immaculate woman, if compared to her successor. To the pure and 
modest beauty of a Madonna, Madame du Barry united the language 
and manners of a common courtesan. It was this contrast and this 
licentiousness that fascinated the corrupt heart of Louis XV. Even 
in the choice of royal mistresses may be traced the descending 
tendency so characteristic of the times. From the daughters of 
nobles to the wife of a bourgeoise, and from her again to a woman 
of the people, the differences were sufficiently striking. 

When Madame du Barry was declared the mistress "en titre" of 
Louis XY., all the high-born ladies — who construed it into an open 
insult that none of them should have been thought worthy of the 
place bestowed on her — opposed her favour with violent and bitter 
hostility. At the head of this party were the Duchess de Grarn- 
mont and the Princess of Beauveau. Both were former favourites 
of Madame de Pompadour. Madame de Grrammont, a reckless, 
despotic woman, the sister of Choiseul — over whose mind she pos- 
sessed great influence — had vainly attempted to succeed Madame de 
Pompadour in the favour of the king. Exasperated and blinded by 
her wounded pride, she prevented her brother from accepting the 
protection Madame du Barry was at first willing to offer. Not satis- 
fied with being, through Choiseul, the arbiter of every important 
state affair, and the distributor of places and favours, Madame de 
Grrammont urged her brother to use his ascendancy over the mind 
of the king, in order to banish Madame du Barry. As it long re- 
mained doubtful which, of the minister or the mistress, would retire 
vanquished from the contest, Madame de Grrammont and the Princess 
of Beauveau enlisted almost the whole court in their cause. Whilst 
the saloons of the Duke of Choiseul and his sister were daily thronged 



DISGRACE OP CHOISEUL. 177 

with courtiers, Madame du Barry saw herself almost wholly deserted. 
The vindictive Madame de Grammont even caused libels to be cir- 
culated and songs to be sung against her rival, wherever the royal 
favourite might go : even at Marly, and in the presence of the king, 
she was followed with insults. The nobles, through a spirit of caste ; 
the philosophers, because they were protected and encouraged by 
Choiseul and his sister j the people, from hatred to the royal profli- 
gacy, — all took up the cry against Madame du Barry • whose only 
crime was, that she was fit for the degrading position to which the 
love of the king had called her. 

She patiently endured these insults ; and Louis XV., with still 
greater patience, put no stop to the insolence of M. de Choiseul. 
The minister became convinced that the king could not dispense with 
his services. In order to render himself still more necessary to him, 
he married the young dauphin (Louis XVI.) to Marie Antoinette, 
the favourite daughter of Maria Theresa : he also hoped, by this 
alliance, to give himself a hold on the future sovereigns of France. 
The chief consideration which kept Louis XV. faithful to his minis- 
ter so long, was, in fact, his own extreme indolence. Madame du 
Barry, seeing at last that the warfare waged against her was a deadly 
one, took up the struggle in good earnest, by attacking the philoso- 
phers and the parliaments, and protecting the religious party. Self- 
preservation rendered her active : she teazed the king incessantly to 
send away Choiseul. Louis XV. still hesitated between his love for 
his mistress and his value for his minister : the imprudence of 
Madame de Graminont precipitated the catastrophe. With the se- 
cret connivance of her brother, the duchess travelled through France, 
entering into communications with the chief agitators of the provin- 
cial parliaments. Her design, and that of Choiseul, was to establish 
a powerful link between all the parliaments and that of Paris, and 
thus, in case of necessity, to renew the times of the league and the 
Fronde. This was enough to doom both Madame de Grammont and 
her brother in the mind of the king. When he saw that, not satis- 
fied with interfering with his pleasure, Choiseul and his audacious 
sister sought even to rouse the nation against him, Louis XV., 
yielding to the representations of Madame du Barry, suddenly dis- 
missed the daring minister. M. de Choiseul was sent into exile j in 
consideration of his amiable wife, the king allowed him to retire to 
Chanteloup, where he possessed a magnificent residence. Madame 
de Grammont, banished from the court, became a provincial canon- 
ess, and lived in a state of mediocrity, until she ascended the scaffold, 
in the time of the Revolution. 

The disgrace of Choiseul was a real triumph, and showed not only 
the weakness of royal authority, but the immense progress the philo- 
sophic party had made. All that the land held of noble and dis- 



178 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

tinguished flocked around the minister in his exile ; and, as though 
to brave the monarch more openly still, there was erected at Chante- 
loup a column, on which all the names of the visitors were inscribed, 
in order to perpetuate the memory of this protest against the personal 
will of the sovereign. Never was the powerlessness of absolute 
monarchy more clearly manifested. 

Madame du Barry made a moderate use of her triumph. Though 
so much hated and reviled, she was indifferent to revenge. If she 
had caused Choiseul to be dismissed, it was because his ruin or hers 
was necessary. This natural kindness of heart, and the perfect good 
humour which she always displayed, greatly contributed to fascinate 
the king. "We must shut up the bastille; you will send no one 
to it," he often observed to her. One of Madame du Barry's first 
acts was to make her lover, the Duke of Aiguillon, minister. It is 
asserted — on somewhat doubtful authority, indeed, but the temper 
of Louis XV. renders the fact probable — that Madame du Barry 
ordered D' Aiguillon to go . and thank the king for the foreign min- 
istry, though it had never been given to him; and that, with his 
usual apathy, Louis XV. submitted to the will of his mistress, and 
allowed D' Aiguillon to enter on the duties of the office she had thus 
bestowed on him of her own authority. 

The political power of Madame du Barry led to what had been 
the constant aim of monarchy since Louis XI V., the suppression of 
the parliaments. This coup d'etat, the work of a capricious favourite 
and of her lover, — for it was D' Aiguillon, who, whilst governor of 
Brittany, had rendered himself so notorious in the affairs of La 
Chalotais, — did not produce a very deep or real effect on the philo- 
sophic power of society. The parliaments represented Jansenism : 
there was no real sympathy between them and the philosophers ; who 
looked upon them as an old and worn-out form of opposition, and 
whose aim was far more bold and destructive. The influence of 
Madame Du Barry was extremely slight. On society at large she 
had no power : nor, indeed^ ^id she seek to exercise any. Her own 
conversation was free from wit or delicacy : it was bold, and even 
licentious. At court, Madame du Barry exercised, however, some 
power. The opposition, which had been raised as long as Choiseul 
was in authority, ceased when the power of the royal favourite was 
fully consolidated. The most noble names in the land were, ulti- 
mately, inscribed at the door of Madame du Barry, as they had for- 
merly been inscribed on the column of Chanteloup. It was on these 
persons that the freedom of speech of Madame du Barry — a free- 
dom in which the king evidently took pleasure — reacted. In order 
to win a few favours, and pay their court to the monarch, Richelieu 
and other old courtiers entered, as they said themselves, on the ways 
of perdition, and relinquished that elegant phraseology, for which 



DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 179 

they had been remarkable so long, in order to adopt the language 
which Madame du Barry had picked up among abandoned women 
and chevaliers d'industrie, the companions of her youth. 

Though the necessity of her position had made Madame du Barry 
enter into the views of the devout party — since she opposed the 
philosophic supporters of Choiseul, whom they naturally disliked — 
there existed no real sympathy between her and the religious por- 
tion of the nation. Never, perhaps, was there so uncompromising 
a reproof administered, as that which Louis XV. received, in the 
presence of his favourite and of the whole court, from the Bishop 
of Senez; who, when preaching before him, reproached him with 
the numerous errors of his life, and with that last scandal of all, the 
favour of Madame du Barry, in terms which might well have made 
the monarch blush with shame, if shame had not long since ceased 
to colour that withered cheek.* Notwithstanding the audacity of 
his reproofs, or perhaps on that very account, the same Bishop of 
Senez was called upon to preach before the king during the Lent of 
the year 1774. He chose for one of his texts the words of the 
Prophet : " Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown V and 
when the forty days were past, Louis XV. was lying dead in the 
royal abbey of Saint-Denis. 

A sudden attack of the smallpox carried off the guilty king in 
the sixty-fourth year of his age. As long as there seemed any 
chance of his recovery, the death-bed of the sick monarch witnessed 
a struggle as disgraceful as that of Metz. The set of devotees, who 
had submitted to the degrading protection of Madame du Barry, 
delayed, as long as decency would allow, the religious rites which 
must necessarily have caused her removal from court; whilst, on 
the contrary, the atheistical and philosophic friends of the ex-minis- 
ter Choiseul, sought by their intrigues to terrify the dying king, and 
hasten the ceremony that was to ruin Madame du Barry. Religious 
terror at length prevailed once more over the mind of Louis XV. 
He ordered D'Aiguillon to take away Madame du Barry ; and, 
after a tender and final adieu to his mistress, he delivered himself 
over to his confessor. As it was not yet quite certain whether the 
king would recover or not, several persons of the court thought fit 
to call on Madame du Barry in her retirement ; and, in consequence 
of this were, for several years afterwards, looked upon with disfavour 
under the reign of Louis XVI. 

When doubt no longer existed with regard to the approaching 
death of the king, the event was expected with general apathy. 
Prayers were offered up for him by the clergy in the churches; but 

* " Qu'il avait ete ramasser dans le ruisseau les vestes de la corruption 
publique," was the expression used by the Bishop of Senez. 



180 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

few of his subjects joined in these petitions. The poissardes kept 
their vow: Louis XV. had neither a " pater" nor an " ave" from 
them. With the exception of the partisans of Madame du Barry, 
none of the courtiers cared to conceal their entire indiiference on the 
subject of the life or death of their sovereign. The neglected 
daughters of Louis XV. alone had sufficient courage and devoted- 
ness to attend on their father ; whose loathsome disease, aggravated 
by a dissolute life, filled all who approached him with horror. 

On the 10th of May, 1774, the whole court was hourly expecting, 
in the " oeil de boeuf " of the palace of Versailles, the dissolution of 
the king. The dauphin, and the rest of the royal family, were to 
leave the palace as soon as Louis XV. should have breathed his last. 
Everything was in readiness, and one of the few attendants who 
lingered in the chamber of the dying monarch had placed a lighted 
taper behind one of the windows, to act as a signal. It was known 
beforehand, that when that feeble light vanished, Louis XV. would 
have ceased to exist. 

The taper was extinguished. The dauphin was then with his 
young wife in a remote part of the palace. A sound, like that of 
loud thunder, was heard : it was the rush of innumerable courtiers, 
eagerly pressing forward to do homage to the new king. Louis XVI. 
and Marie-Antoinette trembled and turned pale. An instinctive and 
irresistible impulse made them both fall down on their knees: a feel- 
ing of dread seemed to usher in for them their most inauspicious 
reign. With heads humbly bowed, clasped hands, and gushing tears, 
they exclaimed, in a faltering tone, "-Guide us, oh Grod! Protect 
us ! we are called to reign too young." 

How often, yet, whilst reading the history of that fatal reign, will 
human wisdom ask, Oh, why did not Heaven hear that prayer ? 

The Countess of Noailles entered the apartment, and was the first 
to salute the new sovereigns. All the grand officers of the crown 
followed in succession. When this duty was over, Marie- Antoinette, 
leaning on her husband's arm, entered the carriage in waiting, and 
rode off with the rest of the royal suite. As soon as it was known 
that the young king and queen were gone, the courtiers deserted 
the royal palace. Every one now dreaded to stay any longer near 
the deceased monarch, whose decaying remains exhaled a contagion 
as foul as the foul corruption of his reign. 

A few attendants watched by the corpse, which was placed in a 
coffin without being embalmed, and conveyed as speedily and pri- 
vately as possible to Saint-Denis. There it rested ; until the people, 
maddened with hatred, caused by ages of misery, rose in their wrath, 
and, after immolating the living, spent the last efforts of their ven- 
geance on the senseless dead. 



PERIOD THE THIRD 



REIGN OF LOUIS XVI. 



CHAPTER I. 

Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette — Their Popularity — Ill-feeling against the 
Queen — Change in the Spirit of Society. 

The same warning-voice which had so boldly upbraided the vices 
of Louis XV., calling on the guilty sovereign to repent ere the hour 
of repentance should have once more gone by, now ushered in the 
opening reign with accents of prophetic wo. 

Jean of Beauvais, Bishop of Senez, was enjoined to preach the 
funeral sermon of the deceased monarch, whom he had so unspa- 
ringly censured in all the pomp and pride of his kingly power. The 
austere prelate belonged to the strict and uncompromising portion of 
the French clergy; he fulfilled his arduous task with mournful but 
courageous severity. The aspect of perishable mortality could not 
awe him into pitying and treacherous silence, or make him flatter, 
with lying lips, the many errors of the royal dead. He spared them 
not : openly alluding to the unpopularity of Louis XV. during the 
latter years of his reign, he uttered this striking and — for absolute 
sovereigns — ever-memorable remark : " The people," said he, so- 
lemnly, "have not perhaps the right of complaining, but theirs is at 
least the right of remaining silent : their silence then becomes the 
lesson of kings." 

Whilst pronouncing the funeral oration of Louis XV., the orator 
seemed to be also lamenting over the dark era of vice and philoso- 
phy ; which, though born beneath that monarch's sway, was not 
now, like him, going down to the tomb. The Bishop of Senez ad- 
dressed the whole eighteenth century in a tone of gloomy foreboding. 
He acknowledged the intellectual progress France had made ; but he 
bitterly reproached the age for its impious and profligate philosophy. 
" We shall have no more superstition," he mournfully observed, 
" because religion will be extinct; no more false heroism, because 
honour will have ceased to exist. . . Behold ! ye bold spirits, the 

16 



182 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ruin caused by your systems ! Tremble at your successes, and at 
a revolution more fatal than the heresies which have changed the 
aspect of several states around us : for there, at least, men still wor- 
ship and live virtuously. And shall our unhappy descendants have 
no faith, no honour, and no God? O, holy, Gallican church! O, 
most Christian kingdom ! God of our fathers, have mercy on pos- 
terity!" Few heeded the warning of the too-clearsighted bishop, 
who lived to see the revolution he had foretold. 

Voltaire answered the Bishop of Senez's attack on the eighteenth 
century, in a strain of coarse, personal abuse. He accused him of 
ingratitude, for having boldly alluded to the vices of Louis XV. ; 
which he, Voltaire, termed love weaknesses ! With equal effrontery, 
he declared that, at no other epoch had there been seen so many 
princesses renowned for their virtue, or so great a number of disin- 
terested and noble-minded ministers. " Never," he proceeds, " have 
men been happier and more enlightened" — the fruits of this happi- 
ness and enlightenment became manifest at the French Revolution — 
" never has society been more amiable, and animated by stronger 
feelings of honour. Never, in short, have belles lettres exercised a 
greater influence over the manners and feelings of the people!" 

The tone of Voltaire's answer to the Bishop of Senez gives a cor- 
rect idea of the wilful blindness of the philosophers. Surrounded by 
a general corruption, which they had aided and enlisted in their 
cause, of which traces might be found in all their works, they had 
the guilt and folly to deny its very existence. The individuals who 
shared the gloomy presentiments of the Bishop of Senez were, indeed, 
very few; the mass of the nation hailed with rapture the reign of 
Louis XVI. : less, however, through love of the new king, than from 
a feeling of deep hatred for the memory of his predecessor. " I 
never saw," observes the traveller Swinburne, "joy more visible 
than it appears to be on the loss of this same Louis le bien-aime." 
Without examining from what motive arose the enthusiasm of the 
people, or what hopes their accession to the throne was doomed to 
realize or disappoint, the. young sovereigns ingenuously rejoiced over 
their brief and unearned popularity. 

The king had then reached his twentieth year. His features were 
heavy and commonplace, but of a mild and benevolent expression. 
His person was awkward and ungainly ; his manner timid, hesitating, 
and abrupt. Without being mean or vulgar, his bearing had none 
of the conscious dignity which becomes the exercise of royal power. 
It was impossible to behold him and not to feel that the respect he 
received was paid to rank alone. The character of Louis XVI. cor- 
responded with his personal appearance: pious, kind-hearted, humane, 
but weak and timid, his virtues were of those which secure affection 
and esteem, whilst they ever fail to command admiration. His in- 



louis xvi. 183 

teliect neither rose above nor sank beneath average excellence. He 
was, however, one of the best geographers in his kingdom, and 
drew up, with his own hand, the instructions for the expedition of 
the ill-fated La Perouse; who attributed them to members of the 
Academy of Sciences, and was greatly astonished to. learn that they 
emanated from the king. His chief pleasures were hunting and 
smith-work, in which he excelled ; his tastes and feelings were essen- 
tially simple and homely ; everywhere, save on a throne, he would 
have been happy and respected ; but with all the virtues of a private, 
man, he had none of those that a monarch should possess. The 
keen, unerring sense that reads through men and men's motives, 
the skill to avoid needless danger, the daring to brave it, the power 
and energy that fit a man for strife and victory, were all wanting in 
Louis XVI. Weak and resistless between his friends and his ene- 
mies, always influenced by the last speaker, he never knew how to 
carry out the plans for reform with which he opened his reign. Of 
all the high qualities a king should own, he had but one: the patient 
and almost sublime endurance of irremediable misfortunes. 

The feelings generally inspired by Louis XVI., at the epoch 01 
his accession to the throne, were esteem and hope; these feelings 
rose into enthusiasm when he appeared in public with his young and 
lovely wife. From her first entrance into the country over which 
she was destined to reign, Marie-Antoinette had excited, by her grace 
and beauty, a universal sentiment of admiration. When the chival- 
rous Duke of Brissac, then governor of Paris, received the young 
dauphiness in his official rank, his sole harangue was the gallant 
assurance that, in the crowd around her, she had already made the 
conquest of two hundred thousand lovers. "Ah! the good people!" 
both she and the dauphin artlessly exclaimed, as they saw themselves 
surrounded in the Tuileries by a respectful and loving multitude. 
Though the dauphiness was then little more than fifteen, she dis- 
played a singular degree of tact and address. On returning from 
Paris to Versailles, she said to her father-in-law: — "Oh! we have 
been so kindly received! How much you must be loved!" Thus 
delicately attributing to the affection felt for the king the sudden 
popularity, of which he might otherwise have shown himself jealous. 
On the evening of her arrival, she supped with the princes, and 
several court ladies, among whom w 7 as Madame du Barry. Louis 
XV. unblushingly introduced the profligate courtesan to his daughter- 
in-law. The youthful Marie- Antoinette deeply resented this indig- 
nity ; but, not wishing to testify her anger too openly, she merely 
asked, what was the beautiful Madame du Barry's office at court. 
" To please and amuse the king," was the courtier-like and ambiguous 
reply. "Then I shall become her rival," answered the dauphiness, 
with a smile. 



184 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Marie-Antoinette was in her nineteenth year at the death of Louis 
XV. Years had ripened her loveliness, which had still all the bloom 
and freshness of youth. Graceful and gay, even more than strictly 
beautiful, she exercised, on all those who approached her, a deep 
and irresistible fascination. To the golden hair, the dazzling fair- 
ness, and the brilliant complexion of a northern beauty, she united 
all the grace and animation of the south. Her oval and expressive 
countenance was rendered remarkably characteristic by the high, 
clear forehead, delicately-formed aquiline nose, and full Austrian 
lip, hereditary in her race. The admiration her personal attractions 
called forth was, however, always tempered by the homage due to 
her rank. The penetrating glance of her tine blue eyes, the mingled 
pride and sweetness of her smile, and the striking elegance and 
dignity of her carriage, whilst they added to the loveliness of the 
woman, never allowed the beholder to forget the queen. Marie- 
Antoinette had been educated for the express purpose of appearing 
with the utmost advantage at the court of France. She readily 
acquired all the tact and frivolous grace necessary to a princess 
who was destined to reign over the most polished and fastidious 
nation of Europe, and to mingle with women of unrivalled taste and 
elegance. But, further than this, the teaching she received did not, 
unfortunately, extend. In every external matter, she was perfectly 
accomplished ; she failed in those essential points which it is the duty 
of true education to develope. To a prompt, unreflecting mind, a 
frivolous and haughty temper, she united a nature full of rash but 
noble impulses. Though she appeared to have inherited all the 
determination of her mother, Maria-Theresa, she w r anted the sagacity 
and courageous calmness which distinguished the empress-queen. 
Ardent, generous, and imprudent, Marie-Antoinette seemed destined 
to dazzle for a moment the court over which she doubly reigned, as 
woman and as queen ; to share and embitter her husband's fatal 
destiny; and to shed around the story of his reign the melancholy 
charm of her beauty, heroism, and misfortunes. 

No signs of this gloomy future were yet visible. The horizon 
was one of unclouded serenity. None of those who crowded around 
the loved and admired Queen of France could foresee the dark 
prison-house that was to replace her brilliant court, or the scaffold 
which closed her brief and sad career. But, even at that epoch of 
universal hope and joy, many were those who beheld, with secret 
disaffection, the daughter of Maria-Theresa seated on the throne of 
France. From the opening of her reign, a party, inimical to the 
young queen and the Austrian alliance, watched with hostile glance 
every imprudence of Marie-Antoinette. It has been mentioned, in 
the preceding pages, that Choiseul, in order to preserve himself in 
his position of prime minister, after the death of Madame de Pompa- 



MARtl ANTOINETTE* 185 

dour, had married the dauphin to a princess of Austria. This union 
was, at the time, viewed with displeasure by the greatest portion of 
the nation. France had been for too many centuries at war with 
Austria, and the alliance concluded with that power through Madame 
de Pompadour was too thoroughly hateful, for the marriage of the 
heir to the crown with Marie-Antoinette, not to be generally viewed 
with disfavour. The superstitiously-inclined did not fail to notice 
the many fatal omens which had ushered in this unhappy union. A 
mysterious and melancholy fate had, they said, been predicted, 
during her youth, to the favourite daughter of Maria-Theresa. She 
left Vienna amidst the mourning of the whole people, and images of 
grief and horror greeted her on her arrival in France. The pavilion 
prepared for her at Strasburg was hung with tapestries representing 
Medea still covered with the blood of her children, and the hapless 
Creusa writhing in the agonies of death. A terrific storm burst forth 
on her marriage day; and the splendid fireworks given on the Place 
Louis XV., in honour of her nuptials with the dauphin, cost the 
lives of several hundred persons, who perished on the same fatal 
spot where both she and her husband were afterwards to suffer. 
Marie-Antoinette probably thought little of these incidents : so far, 
at least, as their relation to the future was concerned ; but there were 
others who treasured up these circumstances in their hearts, and 
dwelt upon them with superstitious dread. 

Apart even from the prejudice her Austrian birth raised against 
her, the young dauphiness was so unfortunate, on her arrival in 
France, as to make numerous enemies, on a ridiculous point of 
etiquette. Maria Theresa had requested of Louis XV. that her 
daughter's cousin, Mademoiselle de Lorraine, might dance a minuet 
at the marriage-ball, immediately after the princes and princesses 
of the royal family. The French duchesses opposed this in the 
most vehement manner, declaring that they recognised no inter- 
vening rank between themselves and the princes of the blood, and 
that if Mademoiselle de Lorraine were allowed to dance her minuet, 
to the detriment of their privileges, all the court ladies would abstain 
from appearing at the ball. Louis XV. vainly asked them, as a 
personal favour, to waive their right for once: they inexorably re- 
fused. The dauphiness was greatly offended at their obstinacy. 
Having procured one of the letters which Louis XV. had addressed 
on this subject to his rebellious aristocracy, she put it away care- 
fully, and wrote on the margin " Je rn'en souviendrai" 

From this apparently trifling matter sprang that vague and mu- 
tual feeling of mistrust which always existed between Marie-Antoi- 
nette and the high court nobility. This feeling was increased by 
the resentment the queen felt for the comparative neglect with 

16* 



186 WOMAN IN FKA^GE. 

which she had been treated until her husband's accession to the 
throne. 

Madame du Barry was all powerful during the latter years of 
Louis XV.'s reign. Whilst she was surrounded by assiduous cour- 
tiers, the proud young dauphiness was scarcely allowed to share 
that general influence of which women are often more jealous than 
of the substantial realities of power. An unacknowledged struggle 
was incessantly carried on between the dauphin's wife and the king's 
mistress. Madame du Barry protected the retrogade party, and 
Marie-Antoinette gave what little power she possessed to the Duke 
of Choiseul and the philosophers : the very men whose imprudence 
was preparing the revolution. 

Although she was too haughty to show how deeply the slights of 
the courtiers had wounded her, Marie- Antoinette never forgot them ; 
and, perhaps, manifested her resentment and contempt too openly, 
when she received, as Queen of France, the homage hitherto paid 
to Madame du Barry. This conduct did not tend to pacify the anti- 
Austrian party, who soon began to spread rumours injurious to the 
young sovereign. Her lightheartedness and love of pleasure were 
insidiously construed into a tendency to satire, and a wish for guilty 
and forbidden amusements. One of the most innocent errors of 
Marie-Antoinette — her disregard of etiquette — proved, however, 
very fatal. The ancient customs of the land fettered the sovereigns 
with numerous and tedious usages, which had the advantage of not 
allowing a shadow of reproach to rest on the name of the monarch's 
spouse. It was felt that, like Caesar's wife, she should not even be 
suspected. Confiding and inexperienced, the queen, who disliked 
restraint, hastened to free herself from the constant surveillance 
exercised upon her by her titled attendants. She thus merely com- 
plied with the independent spirit of the age ; but this freedom of 
conduct subjected her to grievous misinterpretations. A queen who 
could walk out without hoops, and who, in her retreat of Trianon, 
actually requested all the guests to be seated in her presence, was 
indignantly pronounced — by the virtuous dowagers of the court of 
Louis XV. — capable of any impropriety. It is a fact beyond doubt, 
that the infamous calumnies against the queen, and of which the 
traces are not yet wholly effaced in France, first originated amongst 
the nobility. 

With the recklessness which always characterized her, Marie- 
Antoinette did little to conciliate the nobles of her court. She had 
not forgotten their subserviency to Madame du Barry, or their con- 
duct towards Mademoiselle de Lorraine at the epoch of her marriage ; 
and she both laughed at and despised their aristocratic pretensions : 
well knowing that scarcely even one amongst the highest families 
was free from the stain of some financial mesalliance. This latter 



ILL-FEELING AGAINST THE QUEEN. ] 87 

consideration induced the queen not to consult merely high birth in 
the gift of those places and favours which were at her disposal, but 
to be guided chiefly by her own personal feelings and affections. 
The great families, who looked on all the posts at court as theirs by 
right, were profoundly irritated to see them bestowed on those per- 
sons whom the queen's friendship had alone raised from obscurity. 
Marie-Antoinette cared little for their discontent ; policy was never 
her favourite virtue: she did not see the necessity of sacrificing her 
own inclinations to those whom she had been accustomed to consider 
as mere dependants on royalty; and she was still less disposed to 
fetter her freedom with the dull and wearisome routine of etiquette. 

Her tastes were naturally simple : a solitary walk in the wild and 
shady gardens of her favourite Trianon delighted her more than all 
the stately magnificence of Versailles, with its terraces, broad 
avenues, and sculptured marble fountains. Marie- Antoinette often 
displayed the natural kindness of her heart in these lonely prome- 
nades. None ever implored her pity in vain : she indiscriminately 
relieved the wretched beings who sought her assistance. Her be- 
nevolence had all the sincerity and indiscretion of youth. Although 
these morning excursions were perfectly innocent, the queen trusted 
too exclusively to the love and esteem of the people as her safe- 
guard against calumny. Her generous nature deceived her with 
respect to the real worth of popularity. Heedless of the future, she 
welcomed royalty as a glorious vision, fraught with happiness and 
joy. Time alone showed her that even the bright diadem she wore 
might in the end become a sharp and heavy crown of thorns. 

The example of the queen, though generally reproved, was almost 
universally followed. The fashions daily became more simple, and 
less of the old ostentatious formality marked social intercourse. 
Since the death of Louis XIV., the rigid etiquette of former times 
had gradually decreased. Nothing was so calculated to banish it 
entirely as the growing importance given to assemblies : it is when 
men meet seldom that a feeling of jealous restraint marks their in- 
tercourse, As the eighteenth century progressed and drew to a 
close, that ardent desire of equality and freedom, which ultimately 
broke forth in a sanguinary revolution, induced those persons who 
then composed good society to indulge in all the liberty consistent 
with their habits. Although a great degree of independence already 
prevailed, yet, in order to render it more extensive still, the mis- 
tresses of the most fashionable houses of Paris disposed their draw- 
ing-rooms as cafes, with separate tables, refreshments, cards, and news- 
papers, for the convenience of the guests ; who were almost as free 
from restraint as if they had really been in a place of public resort. 
When the queen admitted men at her table — an innovation till then 
unheard of — the etiquette of ordinary life naturally relaxed its 



188 WOMAN IN FRANCE* 

severity. A more moral and democratic tone seemed to pervade 
every class of society ; individual merit openly took its legitimate 
rank; the bourgeoisie adopted a more confidant bearing, and the 
nobles a tone of greater complaisance: the barriers of prejudice and 
station daily yielded to the increasing desire of equality. 

Though Louis XVI. did not at first feel for the queen that pas« 
sionate attachment with which she afterwards inspired him, his 
moral and religious feelings inclined him towards a calm domestic 
life ; of which he felt that it was his duty to give the first example. 
Whilst the court was still in mourning for his grandfather, the king, 
who could not then indulge in hunting, took long matrimonial walks 
with the queen, in those gardens of Choisy where Louis XV. had 
formerly attended the beautiful Madame de Chateauroux. On the 
day following the first of these promenades, several worthy couples, 
little remarkable for conjugal affection, took pattern of the royal 
pair, and had the courage to walk arm-in-arm together for several 
hours. This was considered a heroic instance of the power of 
flattery. Though decency is not virtue, it has still some value. 
If the Court of Louis XVI. was not in reality more moral than 
that of his predecessor, it was by far more respectable and decorous. 
The novels of Voisenon and Crebillon were no longer read openly, 
and even the name of Voltaire could not shield from blame the 
licentiousness of some of his productions. 

The reign of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI. may thus be said 
to have ushered in a remarkable change in the history of French 
social life. Previously to the death of Louis XV. the spirit of philo- 
sophy had already undergone some modifications. After being gross 
and licentious under the regency, exact, ironical, and reasoning, in 
the middle of the century, it now assumed a sentimental and level- 
ling tendency, which contrasted with the sensual and aristocratic 
doctrines of Voltaire. The aspect which society presented was in 
accordance with the spirit of the authors in fashion. The enthu- 
siastic Rousseau, the grave and domestic Richardson, the sentimental 
Sterne, the pastoral Gessner, his disciple, Florian, St. Pierre, the 
author of Paul and Virginia, had replaced the cold sceptics of pre- 
ceding years. Philosophy now assumed a wholly different tendency. 
Vague desires for the general progress of humanity, undefined aspi- 
rations towards excellence, and exaggerated manifestations of feeling 
(which were ironically stigmatized by the name of sensiblerie) began 
to characterize French society. 

In the environs of Paris, and in several of the provinces, moral 
festivals were established. Prizes were given to the most exemplary 
young girls, to pious children, and to kind mothers. — A prize for 
maternal kindness ! Good actions and useful labours were also re- 
warded. In one place La Fete des Bonnes Gens was enthusiasti- 



CHANGE IN THE SPIRIT OF SOCIETY. 189 

cally celebrated. In another, La Fete des Bonnes Moeurs (pure 
morals !) was held with much applause. 

Such festivals and ceremonies might, perhaps, have been natural 
and appropriate in a pure and primitive social state: though it is 
likely that in such a state they would not have been thought of: but 
in France, in the eighteenth century, in the very centre of a corrupt 
and decaying world, they were only hollow vanities, — a mere philo- 
sophical varnish, too transparent to hide the foul corruption which 
lay beneath this fair seeming of virtue. This affectation of external 
show, so well named " Emphase Philosophique," was essentially 
opposed to the pure internal morality of Christianity. In this dis- 
tinction between meretricious ornaments and austere beauty, lay the 
difference of the two systems. 

Madame Riccoboni, a clever authoress of the period, detected, with 
her usual tact, the ridiculous aspect of this new mania. "What!" 
she petulantly observed, " cannot an author now write ten lines 
without exclaiming 'Oh, goodness!' 'Oh, benevolence!' 'Oh, huma- 
nity!' 'Oh, virtue!'" There was, unfortunately, too much of the 
specious morality of Rousseau in this display of refined and elevated 
feeling. Because men spoke with rapturous enthusiasm of virtues 
they never practised, they thought themselves virtuous. Dissipated 
and ambitious women gravely discussed the charms of a calm, retired 
life, and dwelt with emphasis on the pure pleasures of platonic love. 
But even in this exaggerated philanthropy there was much that was 
good and true. The doctrines of love and equality on which it 
rested were derived from Christianity; and, although the philosophers 
marred their beautiful and primitive simplicity by an .inflated and 
declamatory enthusiasm, they could not destroy the serene loveliness 
of the divine original. This " sensiblerie," however ridiculous it may 
have been, was only the weak side of a very important change in 
the feelings and opinions of the French people. According to ano- 
ther observation of the keen-sighted Madame Riccoboni, depth had 
now become the folly of a nation once celebrated for its graceful 
frivolousness. The example of England had greatly contributed to 
this change. Both men and women began to ask themselves if there 
were no higher object in life than mere pleasure. Court intrigues, 
and the adventures of profligate nobles, no longer engrossed exclu- 
sively every conversation. The declamations of Rousseau, and the 
pastorals of Florian, gave fashionable people a taste for the country, 
which displayed itself in imitations of the English cottage life, and 
in such fanciful " bergeries" as that of Trianon, where Marie-An- 
toinette, her husband, and a few chosen friends, assumed the cha- 
racter of peasants, and endeavoured to feel as happy as the humble 
beings they represented. 

Florian w r as popular, but the favourite writer of this epoch appears 



190 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

to have been the novelist Richardson: "that sublime genius," as Di- 
derot enthusiastically called him. When questioned once concerning 
his own affairs, the French philosopher could only answer by broken 
exclamations of "Oh, Pamela! Oh, Clarissa! My friends! Oh, 
Richardson!" This spirit was carried by the women to an extrava- 
gant height. Madame de Tesse, on being shown bv Richardson's 
son-in-law the grave of her favourite author, in Saint Bride's church, 
knelt down on the hallowed spot, and there shed such an abundance 
of tears, that her guide thought she must certainly faint away from 
excess of emotion. The sober citizen was no little alarmed at her 
extraordinary behaviour, and henceforth showed himself somewhat 
reluctant to exhibit the tomb of his deceased relative to French ladies 
of such exquisite feelings. The fashionable foibles naturally took 
the tone of this extreme sensitiveness. Geometry and bel esprit 
were almost out of date. Ladies were now afflicted with mysterious 
diseases springing from the delicacy of their nature. Vapours, and 
fainting fits returning at stated periods, became the prevalent com- 
plaints, whilst plays of the most tender and lachrymose cast had 
alone the power of pleasing the public. 

A republican feeling accompanied, however, this philanthropic 
reaction. The fashions took a Grecian aspect, and antiquity was 
now less studied for its literary resources than for its political cha- 
racteristics. Art fashioned itself according to the prevailing mood. 
The days when Watteau and Boucher interpreted the poetry of 
Chaulieu, Bernis, and Gentil Bernard by voluptuous paintings, were 
past. Greuze now painted pictures in the style of La Chaussee's 
plaintive comedies, whilst the academical vein prepared the young 
David to be the painter of the Revolution. This admiration of repub- 
lican principles was first professed by the nobles. It was they who 
applauded in the palace of Versailles the " Brutus" of Voltaire, acted 
in the presence and by the command of royalty. These two lines, 

" Je suis fils de Brutus et je porte en mon coeur 
La liberte gravee, et les rois en horreur," 

were received with enthusiastic acclamations. The imprudent and 
inconsistent admirers of republican freedom were the same nobles 
who, after aiding and encouraging the Revolution, turned from it as 
soon as it seemed likely to injure their privileges ; and who, under 
the names of emigres, armed all Europe against a republic which 
partly owed its existence to their efforts. 

In this, however, as well as in many other points, the nobles are 
scarcely to be considered free agents. Carried down the tide of 
opinion by the irresistible impulse of their age, they never rightly 
understood the stern task they were fated to accomplish: It is sel- 
dom that the ideas destined to benefit the people are first called 



DECLINE OF THE BUREAUX D'ESPRIT. 191 

forth, or even propagated, by them. The philosophy of the eighteenth 
century was essentially aristocratic in its origin. From princes to 
nobles, from nobles to financiers, from these to bourgeois, and from 
the bourgeoisie to the people, the new doctrines slowly descended in 
ever-widening circles, until the last broad ring of all embraced the 
whole nation. And then, but not till then, did thoughts shape them- 
selves into deeds. 

This gradual descent was very visible : it ought to have been 
equally significant. A traveller returned to France under the reign 
of Louis XVI., after having been several years away : he was asked 
what change he found in Paris since his former stay, — " Nothing," 
answered he, " save that they are now saying in the streets what 
was formerly said in the drawing-rooms." 

The traveller was right: "philosophy" had gone down to the 
people. It had shattered moral and religious feelings, in the minds 
of those whom such feelings alone could render patient under the 
weight of their misery. In a deep and thrilling voice it had told 
the injured of their rights as men : it had reminded them of their 
many galling wrongs. Habit still made them suffer in silence, but 
the seed of future vengeance was sown. 



CHAPTER II. 

Decline of the Bureaux D'Esprit — Marechale of Luxembourg — Madame de 
Beauharnais — Madame Necker — Germaine Necker. 



The remarkable change indicated in the preceding chapter as 
having taken place in French society, had not yet caused it to forego 
its exquisitely polished elegance. The rule of woman over this ar- 
tificial world was, however, now passing rapidly away. 

Madame Geoffrin and Mademoiselle de Lespinasse died in the 
earlier portion of the reign of Louis XVI. , and no ladies of equal 
tact or talent were found to seize on the power they thus left vacant. 
Old, blind, ill-tempered Madame du Deffand still remained ; but she, 
alas, now uttered many querulous complaints concerning the neglect 
and ingratitude of friends, who all abandoned her in old age. Bent 
double with years, her quick intellect unimpaired, her memory still 
stored with tales of the regency and many a scandalous anecdote of 
the days of Louis XV., she stood amid the new generation, sightless 
and alone, a withered relic of the past. How strangely must she — 
so frankly selfish and inexorably real — have wondered at all the 



192 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

strains of high-flown sentiment and lofty philanthropy which sud- 
denly broke forth upon her ear. Well might she also feel chagrined 
to note how her own caustic wit, though still keen and brilliant 
as ever, had lost its wonted power to dazzle and attract. Poor 
woman ! she had outlived her day. Light, epicurean philosophy, 
satirical wit, late suppers, and good cheer, had vanished before fine 
feeling, pastoral lore, and primitive simplicity of manners. Suppers 
were almost immoral, now that the golden age was to return, brought 
back to earth by the " contrat social," and that poor suffering huma- 
nity was to be regenerated without toil or wo. 

Like all those who resorted to Paris for amusement, Walpole noticed 
this alteration with evident displeasure. " They may be growing 
wiser," he pettishly observes, " but the intermediate change is dul- 
ness." The era for bureaux d'esprit was, however, gone beyond 
recall. Philosophy, indeed, no longer sought the aid of their foster- 
ing care; it did not even need them as those central points whence 
it formerly disseminated its doctrines far and wide. The whole 
spirit of the nation had become philosophic ; every drawing-room 
was now a fit arena. It thus happened that when the three great 
bureaux d'esprit had ceased to exist, no effort was made to replace 
them. That such assemblies would be as needless now as they had 
formerly been useful, seemed to be felt almost by intuition. New 
wants, new feelings had arisen. Like many prouder institutions, as 
soon as their appointed task of good or evil was fulfilled, the bureaux 
d'esprit were forgotten ; and their sentimental successors now spoke 
of them as slightingly, as they had probably spoken of the soirees 
of the Hotel Rambouillet and the ritelles* of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. 

The passion for sentiment and " bergerie" was, indeed, carried to 
strange lengths. The Duchess of Mazarin, a fair and florid dame, 
more remarkable for good temper than for tact or wit, indulged her 
pastoral tendencies to an extravagant degree. She once resolved to 
give, in the heart of winter, a fete that should eclipse everything of 
the kind yet known. She fitted up her vast saloon in a style of 
extraordinary splendour, with wide looking-glasses that reached 
from the floor to the ceiling. At the further extremity of the apart- 
ment, a wide recess, separated from it by a glass casement, was 
beautifully decorated with shrubs and flowers, so as to represent a 
lonely bower. Along a winding path, a pretty actress from the 
opera, attired as a shepherdess, was to appear, with dog and crook, 

* The precieuses of the seventeenth century generally received their morning 
visiters before they had risen. Their guests were thus invited to take seats in 
the ruelle, or space extending between the bedside and the wall, and which was 
sufficiently wide to accommodate several persons. From this circumstance a 
morning conversazione became known under the name of ruelle. 



MARECHALE DE LUXEMBOURG. 193 

leading a flock of snowy sheep, to the sound of soft, pastoral melody. 
The light of the lamps, and the surrounding draperies, had been 
judiciously disposed so as to heighten the effect of this little scene, 
with which the dancers were to be suddenly surprised at the most 
interesting moment of the ball. The poor Duchess of Mazarin was 
all impatience until that auspicious moment should arrive ; but 
before she could give the signal that was to summon the shepherdess 
and her flock, a most unfortunate accident occurred. The sheep 
suddenly broke forth from their place of confinement, and burst 
through the glass casement into the ball-room. Panic-struck with 
the novel sight, and especially with the glare of innumerable lights, 
reflected in the large mirrors, they rushed in every direction, 
knocked down dancers, trampled furiously over them, and attacked 
all the looking-glasses with desperate energy. Ladies screamed 
and fainted away ; whilst the disconsolate Duchess of Mazarin 
looked on the whole scene of havoc and confusion with unutterable 
chagrin. 

This untoward incident amused Paris for a whole week, but 
cured no one of pastoral longings. It was discussed with little 
mercy in the circle of the old Marechale de Luxembourg, the friend 
of Madame du Deffand, — like her, the sceptical derider of affected 
feeling, and, though opposed to the prevailing whim, one of the 
reigning oracles of wit and bon ton. If social academies had lost 
their once extensive power, the influence of woman was still widely 
felt in all matters connected with politeness and good-breeding, — 
matters of which she was, indeed, the sole acknowledged judge. 
From this source sprang the power of the Marechale, a very agree- 
able old woman, of aristocratic and elegant manners. She had been 
a beauty in her youth, when her numerous adventures formed the 
theme of many a satirical couplet. Though now grown timorous 
and devout, she occasionally amused herself with singing over, in a 
thin quavering voice, those noels as antiquated as her charms. But, 
whilst she carefully remembered all the verses that spoke of her 
departed beauty, she omitted the less flattering comments on her 
virtue, with the declaration, — " that her memory was failing her, 
and that at her age one began to forget all about those things." 

Walpole, who found no one truly fascinating save Madame du 
Deffand, probably because she admired him extravagantly, speaks 
thus of the Marechale de Luxembourg: "She has been very hand- 
some, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty is gone, 
her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming. This de- 
jection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for she has wit 
and good breeding; but you would swear by the restlessness of her 
person, and the horrors she cannot conceal, that she had signed the 
compact, and expected to be called upon in a week for the perform- 

17 



194 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ance." The fastidious Rousseau judged her differently." The repu- 
tation of her caustic wit had prepared him for an epigrammatic, 
overbearing woman ; whereas, on beholding her for the first time, 
he was not less charmed by the unaffected grace and seducing 
gentleness of her manners, than by the keenness and delicacy of 
her tact. The prudent old Marechale knew very well with whom 
to be satirical ; she did not deal out her arrows right and left, need- 
lessly making herself enemies, like her splenetic friend, Madame du 
Deffand ; to whom she, however, remained faithful, notwithstanding 
her ill-temper, carefully nursing her in her last illness, and assiduously 
playing Ioto with Madame de Choiseul by the bedside of the dying 
woman.* 

Madame de Luxembourg knew how to choose her victims ; 
amongst these was the unlucky Duchess of Mazarin, whose pastoral 
tendencies, want of tact, full, luxuriant figure, and complexion some- 
what too rich and blooming, found no mercy in her sight. " You 
cannot, however, deny that her colour is beautifully fresh," some 
one once observed to the Marechale. " Yes," she impatiently re- 
plied, "as fresh as butcher's meat." The Marechale had been one 
of the most delicate beauties of the court of Louis XV. This crude 
and pitiless comparison, which happened to be strikingly correct, 
joined to the adventure of the terrified flock, nearly drove Madame 
de Mazarin to despair. 

Madame de Luxembourg did not, however, indulge frequently in 
satire or gossip ; these are vulgar amusements, and she held a school 
of good breeding. Nor did she think herself justified in being too 
rigorous ; for she knew, that, with one word of censure, she could 
exclude whomsoever she chose from the established pale of propriety 
and good taste. Her decisions on those matters were without appeal. 
In consequence of this high reputation, the old Marechale might 
generally be seen surrounded by a wide circle of the young noblesse 
of both sexes, who listened to her attentively, modelled their speech 
and manners on her example, and carefully treasured her precepts. 
Her charming granddaughter generally appeared near her, as the 
living testimony of the admirable education an unscrupulous woman 
of the world could give, in her penitent old age. The Countess 
Amelie, as she was generally called, was one of those rare beings 
who seem too bewitching not to be universally admired, and too 
good and gentle not to be still more loved. Young, wealthy, and 
high born, exquisitely beautiful, pious and pure as an angel, lenient 
to the follies of the world, and towards herself rigidly severe, the 
charm of her nature was such as to enable her to dispense with the 
wit and brilliancy which were then considered absolutely necessary 

* See page 232, vol i. 



MARECHALE DE LUXEMBOURG. 195 

for an accomplished woman. Without seeking to dazzle, she at- 
tracted universally. Few women of her time inspired so great a 
number of romantic and passionate attachments : her husband, the 
worthless Duke of Lauzun, alone remained indifferent to her virtues 
and beauty. She charmed even her own sex. Many women con- 
ceived for her an enthusiastic admiration, which showed how far 
they thought her removed, in her excellence, beyond the reach of 
emulation or jealousy. A portrait of the Countess Amelie, by the 
calm Madame Necker, would make this account appear cold and 
tame in comparison with the glowing eulogy bestowed upon her by 
the methodical and reasoning Genevese. Nature had done much 
for this charming woman, but it was also acknowledged that she 
owed far more to the studious care with which she had been reared 
by her grandmother. It was from the Marechale de Luxembourg 
that she had derived the indescribable grace of manner which ren- 
dered her so truly fascinating: she was, however, far more simple 
than her old relative, who carried to a singular degree her love of 
studied elegance. Notwithstanding her extreme devotion, which 
increased as she advanced in vears, the Marechale is said to have 
had little faith in the efficacy of prayers that did not happen to prove 
models of style and taste, and to have candidly believed, in her 
aristocratic pride, that elegance of language could not fail, as well 
as sincerity of heart, from being acceptable to the Supreme Being. 

Thus, notwithstanding the visible decline of female influence, 
society still preserved its exquisite polish. Discussions and earnest 
conversations were seldom allowed ; they were considered as lead- 
ing to exclusiveness and ennui. To pass from one subject to an- 
other with tact and frivolous ease, was the most essential point of 
conversational good breeding. This excessive elegance produced, 
in the end, great monotony : all individuality was destroyed ; origi- 
nality of thought or feeling became almost a reproach ; and social 
intercourse, instead of consisting in the exchange of spontaneous 
feeling, assumed a tone of dull and tedious sameness. 
. Many novel ideas emerged from this antiquated background, but 
the new path which was to lead to a revolution in social manners, 
though already struck, was, as yet, scarcely trod upon. Almost all 
the old frivolousness remained : many ladies had no graver occupa- 
tion than 'parjilage, which consisted in unravelling the gold from 
the silk thread in the rich lace then worn by men of rank. The 
women solicited, for this purpose, the old lace of the cast-off clothes 
belonging to their male friends; and, in their eagerness, they often 
cut off and seized upon that which was new. This fashion was 
carried to such an extent that the presents offered to ladies on new 
year's day, consisted almost exclusively of toys, made of gold thread, 
and all destined to be unravelled. This zeal in favour ofpa?Jilage 



196 WOMAW I?> FRANCE. 

was not wholly disinterested. The gold, when separated from the 
silk, was always sold, and it was calculated that a clever iiarjileuse 
could earn about a hundred louis a year with this lucrative amuse- 
ment. All the women were not, however, so frivolously engaged, 
and a few still opened their saloons to philosophy. The elegant 
Duchess of Brancas and Madame Fanny de Beauharnais, the poetess, 
shared (at an infinite distance, it is true) the empire of the Marecbale 
de Luxembourg;-. 

Madame Fanny de Beauharnais, the aunt of Josephine's first 
husband, was a lady of fashion, who seemed attended by the same 
ill-fortune that persecuted the Duchess of Mazarin. All her efforts 
at notoriety either failed or ended most unpleasantly. ' She began 
by opening a bureau d'esprit, destined to rival that of Madame 
Geoffrin ; but the philosophers and encyclopedists refused to abandon 
their old friend, and Madame de Beauharnais was obliged to receive 
second-rate authors, with Dorat, the poet, at their head. She next 
took to writing indifferent poetry, which she most unadvisedly pub- 
lished. This was a very unfortunate step. The men who gathered 
willingly around a clever woman of the w r orld, cared very little for 
an authoress; who might eclipse their own reputation, and who 
would, at least, exact a degree of flattery and praise they came to 
receive and not to bestow. These reasons rendered the soirees of 
Madame de Beauharnais almost as dull as those of her friend and 
sister poetess, Madame du Bocage. In the year 1773, Madame de 
Beauharnais published a little work, entitled " A Tous les Penseurs, 
Salut !" in which she undertook the defence of female authorship. 
In an age when women ruled everything, from state affairs down to 
fashionable trifles, this w r as, however, considered a strange instance 
of audacity. The bitter and satirical poet, Lebrun, answered 
Madame de Beauharnais in a strain of keen sarcasm. " Ink," said 
he, " ill becomes rosy fingers." Dorat w-as accused of composing 
his friend's poetry ; there is no proof that the accusation w r as founded 
on truth, but it served to prompt Lebrun with the following clever 
epigram : — 

"La belle Egle, dit-on, a deux petits travers : 
Elle fait son visage et tie fait pas ses vers." 

It was not true, however, that Madame de Beauharnais made her 
face. Lebrun had never seen her when he wrote this ; he met her 
afterwards, and admired both her graceful person and her agreeable 
manners. This did not prevent him, however, from still directing 
against her some of his keenest epigrams. Madame de Beauharnais, 
weary of the unequal contest, retired at length from Paris ; which 
had been rendered odious to her by repeated mortifications. 

The wife of the minister, Necker, possessed a more real and 
serious power. 



MADAME NECKER. 197 

Madame Necker was a religious, pure-minded woman, with prin- 
ciples of rigid austerity. Learned, methodical, with a touch of the 
puritanism of Geneva in her tone and feelings ; in manner calm and 
grave, she looked a severe and statue-like figure amidst the gay 
and graceful Frenchwomen of the period. She was a native of 
Geneva, and the daughter of M. Curchod, a Protestant pastor, re- 
siding in the vicinity of Lausanne. Her father gave her the severe 
and classical education which is usually bestowed on men alone, 
and the young Suzanne Curchod was renowned throughout the 
whole province for her wit, beauty, and erudition. Gibbon, the 
future historian, but then an unknown youth studying in Lausanne, 
met Mademoiselle Curchod, fell in love with her, and succeeded in 
rendering his attachment acceptable to both the object of his affec- 
tions and her parents. When he returned, however, to England, 
his father indignantly refused to hear of the proposed marriage be- 
tween him and the Swiss minister's portionless daughter. Gibbon 
yielded to parental authority, and philosophically forgot his learned 
mistress. After her father's death, which left her wholly unpro- 
vided for, Suzanne Curchod retired with her mother to Geneva. She 
there earned a precarious subsistence by teaching persons of her 
own sex. When her mother died, a lady named Madame de Ver- 
menoux induced Mademoiselle Curchod to come to Paris, in order to 
teach Latin to her son. It was in this lady's house that she met 
Necker. He was then in the employment of Thelusson the banker, 
and occasionally visited Madame de Vermenoux. Struck with the 
noble character and grave beauty of the young governess, Necker 
cultivated her acquaintance, and ultimately made her his wife. 
Mutual poverty had delayed their marriage for several years ; but it 
was not long ere Necker rose from his obscurity. Madame Necker 
had an ardent love of honourable distinction, which she imparted to 
her husband, and which greatly served to quicken bis efforts ; his 
high talents in financial matters were at length recognised : he be- 
came a wealthy and respected man. Shortly after her marriage, 
Madame Necker expressed the desire of devoting herself to literature. 
Her husband, however, delicately intimated to her that he should 
regret seeing her adopt such a course. This sufficed to induce her 
to relinquish her intention : she loved him so entirely, that, without 
effort or repining, she could make his least wish her law. 

Madame Necker soon perceived the power of woman in French 
society. With her talents, and the wealth at her command, she saw 
how easily she could acquire an influence which might be highly 
advantageous to her husband. Long before Necker was called to 
office in 1776, his wife had, therefore, opened her house to Mar- 
montel, Saint-Lambert, the Princess of Monaco, Thomas, Guibert, 
the Countess Amelie, Madame de Grammont, Buffon, Madame d'An- 

17* 



198 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

givilliers — formerly Madame du Marchais — La Harpe, Grimm, Ray- 
nal, and all the members of the philosophic body. Though she 
partly succeeded in her object, of thus adding to her husband's 
increasing popularity, Madame Necker wholly mistook her vocation 
when she endeavoured to shine beyond the quiet circle of domestic 
privacy. Notwithstanding her long residence in France, she could 
never divest herself entirely of the primitive austerity imbibed with 
her early education. Her learning, her method, her rigid morality, 
and strict piety, unfitted her for the part she had chosen; which only 
required a light, brillrant wit, and graceful ease of manner. The 
truthfulness, and even the simplicity, of her pure nature, secured the 
respect and esteem of her guests; but they all felt that she failed in 
that power of pleasing, then far more highly valued than the most 
sterling qualities. Her brilliant complexion, intelligent features, and 
fine figure, only elicited cold admiration. Even her friends could 
not forgive her dancing so awkwardly, dressing with so little taste, 
and, above all, wanting the charm of that all-pervading grace which 
had rendered the plain Mademoiselle de Lespinasse attractive, and 
almost beautiful. They found her bearing formal and constrained ; 
her language too cold and stately. In vain she drew around her 
men of talent and agreeable women; in vain she paid the most sedu- 
lous attention to her guests, and exerted herself to please them: there 
seemed, in all she said or did, something to be wanting still. The 
severity of her religious principles, and the freedom with which she 
manifested them, somewhat annoyed and restrained her philosophic 
guests. They felt also (what her polite hospitality could never 
wholly conceal) that the pleasure she found in their company was 
not the chief object for which she drew them around her. To pro- 
cure her husband a pleasing relaxation, and to advance him in life, 
were her real intentions in opening her house to the philosophers; 
and she unfortunately allowed this to be rather too clearly perceived. 
The honest but pompous Necker did not interfere with his wife's 
literary society. He was always present, but spoke little, and 
allowed every one else to talk for his amusement. The task of 
directing the conversation he left to Madame Necker. Her solid and 
serious mind was little adapted for this responsibility. It has been 
said that she often prepared her evening conversations beforehand: 
she certainly wanted that spontaneousness which gives to social 
intercourse its greatest charm. But the capital error of Madame 
Necker, in the eyes of the philosophers, was that, either through 
mismanagement or economy, she failed in providing them with good 
cheer. Grimm feelingly complained of her cook, who was no doubt 
vastly inferior to that of Baron d'Holbach, the celebrated maitre 
d'hotel of philosophy. 

Though Madame Necker's Friday dinners were too stiffly solemn, 



MADAME NECKER. 199 



and very indifferent in a gastronomic point of view, the growing 
importance of her husband, and her own real, if not very brilliant, 
merit, caused them, in spite of the touch of ennui they imparted, to 
be well attended. Her worldly position, as the wife of a wealthy 
banker, was one of great influence. It was Madame Necker who 
first conceived, in the year 1770, the idea of erecting, by the sub- 
scriptions of literary men, a statue to Voltaire. Subscriptions soon 
poured in: Rousseau, to Voltaire's infinite annoyance, sent his sub- 
scription of three louis ; and the sculptor Pigalle was despatched to 
take a model of the favoured French poet. When, a few years 
later, Gibbon visited Paris, he found his Mademoiselle Curchod on a 
level with those ladies who then gave the tone to foreign courts and 
Parisian society. She received her former admirer with a cordial, 
unembarrassed manner ; which showed that, if his infidelity had 
ever inspired her with any resentment, the feeling had long since 
subsided and yielded to entire indifference. Gibbon, forgetting that 
years had not improved his personal appearance — he was very short, 
and had grown enormously stout—was not a little nettled to perceive 
that Necker, nowise jealous of his wife's first lover, did not scruple 
to leave them alone together, whilst he comfortably retired to rest. 
Necker, however, very highly prized Gibbon's conversation, and 
subsequently visited him in England, accompanied by his wife. 

As Necker rose in the world, Madame Necker's influence in- 
creased ; but it never was an individual power, like that of Madame 
du Deffand, or of the Marechale de Luxembourg. Over her hus- 
band, she always possessed great influence. Her virtues and noble 
character had inspired him with a feeling akin to veneration. He 
was not wholly guided by her counsels, but he respected her opinions 
as those of a high-minded being, whom all the surrounding folly 
and corruption could not draw down from her sphere of holy purity. 
If Madame Necker was loved and esteemed by her husband, she 
may be said to have almost idolized him ; and her passionate at- 
tachment probably increased the feelings of vanity and self-impor- 
tance of which Necker has often been accused. This exclusive de- 
votedness caused some wonder amongst the friends of the minister 
and his wife; for seldom had these sceptical philosophers witnessed 
a conjugal union so strict and uncompromising, and yet so touching 
in its very severity. 

When Necker became, in 1776, Director-General of the Finances, 
his wife resolved that the influence her husband's official position 
gave her should not be employed in procuring unmerited favours for 
flatterers or parasites. She placed before herself the far more noble 
object of alleviating misfortune, and pointing out to her reforming 
husband some of the innumerable abuses which then existed in 
every department of the State. One of her first attempts was to 



200 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

overthrow the lottery. She pressed the point on Necker's attention ; 
but, though he shared her convictions, he had not the power of 
destroying this great evil : he did, however, all he could to moderate 
its excesses. The prisons and hospitals of Paris greatly occupied 
the attention of Madame Necker during the five years of her hus- 
band's power. Her devotedness to the cause of humanity was ad- 
mirable, and shone with double lustre amidst the heartless selfishness 
of the surrounding world. She once happened to learn that a certain 
Count of Lautrec had been imprisoned in a dungeon of the fortress 
of Ham for twenty-eight years ! and that the unhappy captive now 
scarcely seemed to belong to human kind. A feeling of deep com- 
passion seized her heart. To liberate a state prisoner was more 
than her influence could command, but she resolved to lighten, if 
possible, his load of misery. She set out for Ham, and succeeded 
in obtaining; a sight of M. de Lautrec. She found a miserable-look- 
ing man, lying listlessly on the straw of his dungeon, scarcely 
clothed with a few tattered rags, and surrounded by rats and rep- 
tiles. Madame Necker soothed his fixed and sullen despair with 
promises of speedy relief; nor did she depart until she had kept her 
word, and seen M. de Lautrec removed to an abode where, if still a 
prisoner, he might at least spend in peace the few days left him by 
the tyranny of his oppressors. 

It is said that the celebrated De la Tude, the ill-fated victim of 
Madame de Pompadour, also owed his freedom to the interference of 
Madame Necker ; whose attention was first drawn to his case by 
the humble but generous Madame le Gros. Acts of individual 
benevolence were not, however, the only object of the minister's 
wife. Notwithstanding the munificence of her private charities, she 
aimed none the less to effect general good. Considerable ameliora- 
tions were introduced by her in the condition of the hospitals of 
Paris. She entered, with unwearied patience, into the most minute 
details of their actual administration, and, with admirable ingenuity, 
rectified errors or suggested improvements. Her aim was to effect 
a greater amount of good with the same capital, which she now saw 
grossly squandered and misapplied. The reforms which she thus 
introduced were both important and severe. She sacrificed almost 
the whole of her time to this praiseworthy task, and ultimately 
devoted a considerable sum to found the hospital which still bears 
her name. Beyond this, Madame Necker sought to exercise no 
power over her husband, or through his means. She loved him far 
too truly and too well to aim at an influence which might have 
degraded him in the eyes of the world. Necker was, however, 
proud of his noble-hearted wife, and never hesitated to confess how 
much he was indebted to her advice. When he retired from office, 
in 1781, and published his famous " Compte Rendu," he seized this 



MADAME NECKER. 201 

opportunity of paying a high and heartfelt homage to the virtues of 
his wife. "Whilst retracing," he observes at the conclusion of his 
wo k, " a portion of the charitable tasks prescribed by your ma- 
jesty, let me be permitted, sire, to allude, without naming her, to a 
person gifted with singular virtues, and who has materially assisted 
me in accomplishing the designs of your majesty. Although her 
name was never uttered to you, in all the vanities of high office, it is 
right, sire, that you should be aware that it is known and frequently 
invoked in the most obscure asylums of suffering humanity. It is 
no doubt most fortunate for a minister of finances to find, in the 
companion of his life, the assistance he needs for so many details of 
beneficence and charity, which might otherwise prove too much for 
his strength and attention. Carried away by the tumults of general, 
affairs, — often obliged to sacrifice the feelings of the private man 
to the duties of the citizen, he may well esteem himself happy, when 
the complaints of poverty and misery can be confided to an enlight- 
ened person who shares the sentiment of his duties." 

Necker was greatly criticised for the public acknowledgment he 
thus made of his wife's virtues, and of the aid which he had derived 
from them ; but he spoke so because her power had been pure, and 
such as he did not blush to avow. The influence of Madame Necker 
over her husband was not, however, always irreprehensible : his 
resignation, in 1781, which delivered France over to Calonne and 
Xomenie, is generally attributed to her. The grief she felt at the 
libels which daily appeared against him, joined to her ardent and 
ambitious wish of seeing him acknowledged minister — an office of 
which he had all the toil and responsibility, without the dignity it 
confers — induced her to persuade her husband to tender his resigna- 
tion, unless he could obtain the post to which his services gave him 
a claim. The intrigues of Maurepas, and of all the courtiers he had 
irritated by his economy, prevented this justice from being rendered 
to Necker. His resignation was accepted, and he retired once more 
to private life. 

The saloon of Madame Necker, during this her husband's first 
ministry (for such it was in reality, though not in name) was much 
enlivened by the presence of her only child, Germaine Necker, who 
afterwards became the celebrated Madame de Stael, and whose 
character already differed so strikingly from that of her mother. 
Madame Necker, with all her high principle and noble qualities, was 
rigid and somewhat pedantic. She was capable of a deep and sin- 
cere attachment, but her mind was too calm and too well-disciplined 
for passion. Her slightest actions were regulated by a sense of 
method and duty. She neither admitted nor understood other laws 
of conduct. Germaine Necker, on the contrary, displayed, even as 
a child, an ardent nature, full of passionate impulses, strange in one 



202 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

so young. The least emotion of joy or grief affected her even unto 
pain ; she could scarcely hear her parents commended without 
bursting into tears, and the mere thought of meeting some remark- 
able and celebrated personage made her heart beat, and powerfully 
agitated her whole frame. For this impetuous and enthusiastic 
young being to be placed under the control of the calm and methodi- 
cal Madame Necker, was like a lava stream compelled to flow 
through some cold northern region. Nothing annoyed Madame 
Necker more deeply than this wide dissimilarity which nature had 
placed between herself and her daughter. She had early resolved 
to educate her child according to a peculiarly strict system of her 
own; but it was in vain that she sought to curb that burning spirit 
within the sphere of her formal rules. Germaine was docile to the 
will of her parents, and would willingly have obeyed, if an irresisti- 
ble impulse had not led her far beyond her mother's cold and me- 
thodical teaching. One of her favourite amusements, as a child, 
was to cut out paper kings and queens, and make them act in trage- 
dies which she improvised on the instant, speaking for all the 
characters successively. Madame Necker, whose rigid Calvinist 
notions were offended by her daughter's theatrical predilections, in- 
terdicted this amusement, which Germaine, unable to relinquish, 
followed in secret. It was also by stealth that she read most of the 
novels of the day ; amongst the rest, Richardson's " Clarissa Har- 
lowe," whose elopement, as she afterwards so happily expressed it, 
had been one of the great events of her- own youth. 

Instead of being educated, like most of the young ladies of the 
period, in the calm seclusion of a convent, Mademoiselle Necker 
was thus reared at home, and allowed to mingle freely with the 
talented guests who assembled in her mother's drawing-room. This 
produced in her a premature development of intellect which, though 
it could not weaken her powerful genius, most probably abridged 
her brilliant career. Germaine generally sat on a low wooden stool, 
near the arm-chair, and under the watchful eye of Madame Necker, 
who constantly reminded her to hold herself straight. Though the 
child was dark and plain, the striking intelligence of her expressive 
countenance, and the wonderful beauty of her large black eyes, gave 
her a singular attraction ; with all the grace and freshness of youth, 
she had none of its puerility. Some of the gravest men who visited 
Madame Necker, found evident pleasure in conversing with the pale, 
earnest girl. The precocity of her judgment already revealed what 
she would one day become. The Abbe Raynal discerned amongst 
the first her intellectual power ; and she was scarcely emerging from 
childhood, when he wished her to contribute a dissertation on the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for his great philosophical work. 
In this feverish atmosphere of praise and intellectual excitement 



GERMAINE NECKER. 203 

grew up Germaine Necker. From her mother she imbibed a strong 
religious feeling, which never abandoned her ; Necker imparted to 
her his ambitious love of political popularity; and the society in 
which she was brought up strengthened her passion for literature 
and fed the burning- flame of her genius. Her life and her writings 
bear deep traces of these three powerful principles. 

The natural result of an education which thus sequestered her 
almost entirely from that self-communion that teaches how to dis- 
pense with the world's approbation or blame, was to engender a 
passionate thirst of applause and social distinctions in the daughter 
of Necker. Dazzled by the power then granted to conversational 
eloquence, she also sought to shine by that brilliant accomplishment: 
nor was it mere vanity that induced her to act thus ; there is, and 
must ever be, deep pleasure in the exercise of great intellectual 
powers like hers. As a talker, she has not, perhaps, been surpassed. 
Clear, comprehensive, and vigorous, like that of man, her language 
was also full of womanly passion and tenderness. The calm Ma- 
dame Necker was soon thrown into the shade by her brilliant and 
accomplished daughter : she was too noble-minded to feel the least 
jealousy of one who was so dear to her, although their natures were 
most uncongenial ; but she was hurt to perceive that her husband, 
that object of her exclusive idolatry, almost preferred the compa- 
nionship of his daughter to her own. The deep attachment which 
Necker's wife always professed for him was a passion in the soul of 
the more ardent Germaine. She carried this feeling to an excess, 
and once confessed, " that she could almost feel jealous of her 
mother." Could a man so ardently loved fail to be vain'.' The 
decaying health of her mother also contributed to give more impor- 
tance to Germaine, in the soirees held at her father's house. Ma- 
dame Necker became afflicted towards the end of her life with a 
painful nervous disease, that compelled her to remain constantly 
standing: she had become thin and extremely pale ; her dazzling 
freshness had wholly vanished, and when she now received her 
guests, she looked more cold and statue-like than ever by the side 
of her animated daughter. Weakened by long illness, she welcomed, 
as a relief, the comparative neglect of her latter years, and gladly 
left Paris after the close of her husband's second ministiy. They 
retired to Coppet, where she died in 1794, calm and resigned amidst 
the most acute sufferings. 

If Madame Necker has not left so remarkable a name as many 
women of her time; if her contemporaries, justly perhaps, found 
her too cold and formal ; yet she shines, at least in that dark age, a 
noble example of woman's highest virtues, — devoted love, truth, and 
purity. 



204 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER III. 

Madame de Genlis — "The Order of Perseverance" — Madame de Montesson — 
Franklin — Death of Voltaire and Rousseau. 

The golden days, when woman ruled arbitrarily over the French 
social world, were now nearly over. The society of Madame 
Necker was one of the very few that maintained its position ; and 
this may have been partly owing to Necker's political power. The 
little economist coterie of Madame d'Angivilliers still remained ; but 
it was too circumscribed in its spirit, to possess the wide influence it 
might otherwise have exercised. Notwithstanding these disadvan- 
tageous circumstances, many women could still, when sufficiently 
attractive, obtain a considerable share of the dominion which had at 
one time been so liberally granted to their sex ; but the difference 
between their former and their actual power was that the latter 
proved to be essentially personal, and could no longer be exercised 
through the medium of a coterie. 

Amongst the women who possessed most of this individual 
influence, during the earlier portion of the reign of Louis XVI., 
was the pretty and clever Madame de Genlis, then in all the 
freshness of her charms, and the enjoyment of her literary celebrity. 
Young, agreeable, with brilliant black eyes, luxuriant light-brown 
hair, and a countenance of remarkable piquancy, which often caused 
her to be likened to Marmontel's Roxelane ; she, moreover, pos- 
sessed the suppleness of manner, and soft, insinuating grace, in 
which the more honest and straightforward Madame Necker entirely 
failed. Madame de Genlis is now chiefly considered as the authoress 
of very clever works on education : but, at the epoch when she 
figured so brilliantly in French society, she was- known as a witty 
woman of fashion, who played admirably on almost every known 
musical instrument, mingled in all the gaieties of life, amused her- 
self, and intrigued with the best of Parisian ladies ; and who, not- 
withstanding the time she gave to pleasure, found means, by her 
singular perseverance and industry, to study various sciences and 
languages, and to engage in the composition of works requiring, 
not only a well-practised pen, but also great talent and a .considerable 
degree of research. The highly moral and useful aim of her most 
important works could not, however, secure the reputation of Ma- 
dame de Genlis from reproach. 



MADAME DE GENLIS. 205 

From her first appearance in Parisian society, as Mademoiselle de 
Saint-Aubin, a young lady of noble birth, reduced to the position of 
a musical artiste, down to her equivocal connexion with Philippe 
Egalite, and her intrigues for his party during the revolution, her 
character and position always appeared in the doubtful and am- 
biguous light which seldom fails to prove fatal to a woman's fair 
name. 

Her family was ancient and noble, but greatly impoverished. 
She was still a child, when pecuniary distress compelled her father 
to leave France. She remained with her mother, a handsome, 
clever, and intriguing woman, who won the favour of M. de la 
Popeliniere, and was received with her daughter in the splendid seat 
he possessed at Passy, near Paris. The rich and voluptuous 
financier allowed himself to be charmed in his old age by the grace 
and dawning beauty of the youthful Mademoiselle de Saint-Aubin. 
He lamented her extreme youth, which rendered it impossible to 
think of marrying her: as, had she only been a few years older, he 
would have done, in spite of his conjugal experiences and mis- 
fortunes. Child as she was, she understood very well his sighing 
exclamation of quel dommage ! whenever his look rested on her 
graceful though girlish form ; and she frankly confesses, in her 
memoirs, that she could almost have said quel dommage ! herself. 
Although the disparity of years between sixty-six and thirteen, 
rendered a conjugal union impossible, Mademoiselle de Saint-Aubin 
soon wormed herself into the favour of her ancient admirer, by an 
easy, caressing manner, of which her dependent position early 
taught her the value. As soon as he discovered the great talent for 
music of his young protegee, M. de la Popeliniere procured her the 
best and most expensive masters : she was likewise taught declama- 
tion, singing, and dancing, at the cost of her generous protector. 
Nature seemed to have destined her to excel in brilliant and external 
accomplishments : she soon acted on the theatre in M. de la Popeli- 
niere's residence, with infinite tact and humour, and delighted all his 
guests by dancing a characteristic pas taught her by the famous 
Deshayes. 

It was to the early and careful teaching she thus received that 
Stephanie de Saint-Aubin owed the musical excellence which, on 
the death of their benefactor, her mother was compelled to turn to 
pecuniary advantage. Madame de Saint-Aubin took her daughter 
into the most fashionable societies, where her musical performances 
were liberally remunerated. By many of her hosts the young girl 
was received with the courtesy her birth and former position in life 
demanded ; but a far greater number treated her slightingly, or at 
the best with patronising politeness. She was drawn from this sub- 
ordinate position by her marriage with the Count of Genlis, one 01 

18 



206 WOMAN IH FRANCE. 

the most witty and profligate nobles of the period. The young 
nobleman had met her father in the colonies, and there contracted a 
close intimacy with him. When they had been acquainted some 
time, M. de Saint-Aubin confidentially showed to his young friend the 
letters he received from his daughter. M. de Genlis was charmed 
with the simple and graceful style of these epistles,- and still more 
with a delightful miniature portrait which accompanied them, and 
scarcely did justice to the attractive features and graceful person of 
the writer. His first visit, when he returned to France, was paid 
to Mademoiselle de Saint-Aubin. The freshness and piquancy of 
her beauty, the easy vivacity of her manners, her wit, and accom- 
plishments, surpassed his expectations, and fascinated him com- 
pletely. He married her, notwithstanding the opposition of his 
family, and generously enabled her father to return to France, by 
paying off his creditors. 

The pretty Madame de Genlis soon ranked amongst the fashion- 
able women of the day. Full of tact and talent, ambitious and per- 
severing, under an air of frivolous gaiety, she succeeded in pacify- 
ing her husband's relatives, and in obliterating whatever discredit 
she might have derived from her former position as a musical artist. 
Her conduct was, however, strongly characterized by that mixture 
of independence and levity which marked society under the rule of 
Louis XV. : she rode and dressed like a man ; went in disguise to 
the Bal des Porcherons ; danced there with the footman of M. de 
Brancas ; and, when not otherwise occupied, amused herself with 
studying anatomy and bleeding the sick. Her restless and aspiring 
temper led her to seek distinction by every attainable method. 
There then existed in French society a fashionable reaction in favour 
of knightly virtues, and the golden days of ancient chivalry. Ca- 
rousals and other pastimes of the olden time were revived at Ver- 
sailles. This enthusiasm resembled, in many respects, the spirit of 
knight-errantry. The young nobles seemed to have proclaimed 
themselves the champions of freedom and humanity. Women, like 
the ladies of yore — 

" Whose bright eyes 
Rained influence, and judged the prize — " 

urged them on, and by their impulsive enthusiasm materially aided 
this movement. In order to identify herself with it, Madame de 
Genlis founded a romantic order entitled the " Order of Perseve- 
rance ;" but fearing lest her own authority might not suffice to re- 
commend and bring it into repute, she declared that it was of the very 
highest antiquity, having originally flourished in Poland, for several 
centuries, and that she held the laws and statutes from the Prin- 
cess Potocka and the Count of Brostocki : both were her friends, and 



THE ORDER OF PERSEVERANCE. 207 

confirmed this account. Stanislaus, King of Poland, with whom 
Madame de Genlis then carried on a friendly correspondence, who 
had sent her his portrait, and to whom she had forwarded hers in 
return, favoured her sentimental fraud by writing her a letter intended 
to be exhibited, and in which he thanked her for having revived this 
ancient Polish order. Picturesque costumes, borrowed from the 
middle ages, enigmas composed by Madame de Genlis, moral ques- 
tions, virtuous speeches, ingenious mottos and chivalrous oaths, 
formed the staple of this " Order of Perseverance :" a toy well fit for 
a puerile and decaying aristocracy. 

The fetes and ceremonies of this institution afford no interest; the 
most amusing circumstance connected with it was, that the historian 
Rulhiere gravely told Madame de Genlis he was well acquainted 
with the order and all its statutes, having met with interesting de- 
tails relative to it in his researches on the history of Poland. 
Madame de Genlis could not inform him that the soi-disant Polish 
order owed its existence to her own fertile brain ; but she was much 
entertained at the positive knowledge displayed by the learned histo- 
rian. Her literary successes, and the education of the children of the 
Duke of Chartres, soon diverted the attention of Madame de Genlis 
from her "Order of Perseverance;" which, being deprived of her 
fostering care, languished, and was ultimately forgotten. 

The connexion of Madame de Genlis with the Orleans family (a 
connexion which influenced the whole of her life) had originated 
with her husband, one of the favourites and boon companions of the 
Duke of Chartres. The clever lady had early displayed her talent 
for intrigue at the expense of this branch of the royal family, by 
marrying her aunt, Madame de Montesson, to the old Duke of Or- 
leans. The duke had for many years been connected with an ac- 
tress named Marquise. This circumstance gave great annoyance 
to the ladies of his little court, who, unable to associate with the 
mistress of the prince, were thus debarred from the fetes and plea- 
sure parties he gave in his various country-seats to Mademoiselle 
Marquise. In order to obviate so serious an evil, they tacitly agreed 
— well-bred people never speak of such things — to give the duke, if 
possible, a mistress of their own rank: a nobly-born, accomplished 
lady, who would know how to do the honours of her lover's princely 
entertainments, and with whom they could associate, at least with- 
out degradation. They fixed upon the Marchioness of Montesson — 
a handsome widow, with whom the prince was evidently as much 
in love as his phlegmatic nature would allow him to be with any 
one — as the person most likely to effect their prudent and moral 
purpose. Madame de Montesson was accordingly studiously praised 
to the Duke of Orleans. Her beauty, her talents, her virtues, were 
so constantly exalted in his presence, that the weak-minded old man 



208 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

thought she must certainly be a paragon of perfection. She be- 
haved with infinite tact ; for, instead of throwing herself in the 
duke's way, she feigned a violent and despairing passion for the 
Count of Guines. This nobleman was in the secret, and treated her 
with marked indifference. The old duke, affected by the sorrow of 
the woman he loved, sought to console her; Madame de Montesson 
eagerly accepted his friendship, and, after heightening his passion by 
every art in her power, ended by declaring herself entirely cured of 
her unhappy love. This rather cooled the Duke of Orleans : the great 
disparity of rank between them made him hesitate to offer her his 
hand ; the rigidity of the principles he had always heard her profess, 
forbade him to think of any less honourable proposal. In this di- 
lemma, he would probably have given up Madame de Montesson 
altogether, if her niece had not interfered. Madame de Genlis 
wished to serve her aunt ; she also entertained the ambitious and not 
unnatural desire of being connected by alliance with the Orleans 
family. She accordingly employed all her tact and talent to seduce 
the old duke into the proposed marriage ; he wavered long, but her 
arts finally triumphed, and in the year 1773, Madame de Montesson 
became the wife of one of the first princes of the royal blood of 
France. 

The vexation of the ladies who had contributed to raise her to this 
unexpected elevation was extreme. They had not suspected Madame 
de Montesson of so much ambition or principle, nor had they thought 
to find a superior where they only wished for an equal. They, how- 
ever, derived some consolation from the fact that, though the king 
acknowledged her as the legitimate wife of the Duke of Orleans, he 
refused her the rank and titles of her husband. Madame de Mon- 
tesson, consequently, abstained from going to court. The Count of 
Guines received the embassy of Berlin for his share in the intrigue, 
and Madame de Genlis owed to the joint efforts of her aunt and her 
husband, a place in the household of the young Duchess of Chartres 
then recently married. 

Madame de Montesson, not being recognised as Duchess of Or- 
leans, attempted to shine by her talents. She gained an unfortunate 
degree of notoriety from the number of bad plays she wrote. They 
were admired by her friends, and hissed by the public : this ill fortune 
afforded her, however, the opportunity of acting with great spirit and 
dignity. She was advised not to acknowledge the authorship of the 
unsuccessful comedies, and thus to screen herself from ridicule ; but 
she firmly refused, lest some other person might be suspected. Madame 
de Montesson might be a bad authoress, but she was a very clever 
and agreeable woman; she sang and played well, and even in her 
old age excelled in flower-painting, of which she has left some mas- 
terly specimens. She understood several sciences, spoke with grace 



MADAME DE GENLIS. 209 

and elegance, and was an admirable actress ; in consequence of 
which, private theatricals were her favourite amusement. These 
qualifications, joined to high rank, great wealth, and polished man- 
ners, caused her house to be considered one of the most pleasant in 
Paris; even though the guests were sometimes obliged to praise, and, 
what was more difficult, to listen to, her tedious, heavy comedies. 
When Voltaire visited Paris in the year 1778, he solicited with great 
eagerness the favour of being admitted to one of the private per- 
formances, in which she acted with the Duke of Orleans. The re- 
quest was granted, and the old poet showed his gratitude by applauding 
until the fall of the curtain. The duke, leaning on the arm of his 
wife, then advanced towards the box of Voltaire ; who, with the ex- 
treme and ludicrous vivacity which characterized him even in old 
age, knelt down to receive the prince and Madame de Montesson. 

The Duke of Orleans died in 1785. Louis XVI. , somewhat un- 
graciously, forbade Madame de Montesson to wear deep mourning 
for her husband. She retired to a convent, where she spent the 
time of her widowhood. When she reappeared in the world, it was 
to signalize herself by her benevolence. During the severe winter 
of the year 1783, she converted her hothouses into asylums for the 
poor. There they not only received a shelter from the intense cold, 
but were fed and employed at her expense. It is said that this 
generous act was not forgotten by the people, and enabled Madame 
de Montesson to pass unscathed through the evil days of the French 
Revolution. 

As ambitious as her aunt, and far more talented, Madame de 
Genlis was, in the meanwhile, laying the basis of her future reputa- 
tion. She had excellent opportunities of doing so in the household 
of the voung Duchess of Chartres, with whom she soon became as 
great a favourite as her husband was with the Duke. The Duchess 
of Chartres, though virtuous, and wholly devoted to her unworthy 
husband, was also young, beautiful, and fond of pleasure. Almost 
all her ladies of honour were handsome and witty ; thev formed a 
very gay little court, much frequented by foreigners of distinction, 
and by those members of the French aristocracy who preferred the 
freedom of the Palais-Royal to the old stateliness of Versailles. 
The Duchess of Chartres, in thus establishing a court of her own, 
only aimed at amusement ; her husband entertained far deeper 
views. The unbounded indulgence of those excesses, which had 
left their indelible traces on his once noble and handsome features, 
had not erased from the mind of the young duke the hereditary 
talent, pride, and jealousy of his race. He was disliked by Marie- 
Antoinette and Louis XVI. ; he hated them in return. If his errors 
were great, he felt they were not more flagrant than those of the 
king's brother, the Count of Artois. Yet he was pointed out, almost 

18* 



210 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

exclusively, to public scorn. Disappointed ambition heightened the 
resentment of wounded pride. Louis XVI., with the policy of his 
predecessors, refused to grant the Duke of Chartres the high posts 
and the influence which he claimed. 

The elements of a vast opposition, social and not yet political 
(for the government was still absolute), pervaded the whole of 
society ; the irritated prince gathered them within his grasp, and 
led the movement. He soon became the model of fashion with the 
young and profligate nobles ; the women admired his recklessness 
and daring ; the court feared him ; the people, flattered by his cour- 
tesy, remembered the traditions which foretold a high destiny for 
his house : in those traditions, it is said that he himself had a super- 
stitious faith. Thoughtless young men and clever women became 
the chief agents of his ambitious designs. He was quickly and 
instinctively attracted by the wit, beauty, and supple intriguing 
spirit of Madame de Genlis. The very pointed attentions he paid 
her gave rise to some rumours, unheeded by the guileless Duchess 
of Chartres. The Count of Genlis betrayed not the least jealousy. 
In the year 1776, the Duke of Chartres, with the consent of his 
wife, confided to Madame de Genlis the education of his infant 
daughters ; and, some time afterwards, named her gouverneur of 
his sons. 

Whatever may have been the errors of Madame de Genlis, or 
the nature of her connexion with the father of the children whose 
instruction she undertook, she at least educated them as few French 
princes had been educated since the time of Fenelon. " She made 
them," said an eminent historian, " not princes, but men." The 
numerous works on education which she composed for their benefit 
procured her, at the same time, an extraordinary degree of reputa- 
tion. Buffon, who affectionately gave her the name of " daughter," 
once compared her style to that of Fenelon ; and, alluding to the 
moral tone of her writings, enthusiastically styled her " an angel of 
light !" The education which Madame de Genlis gave to her pupils, 
whilst leaving them all the elegance and graces of their high rank, 
was eminently calculated to render them popular at a future time. 
This was done intentionally. The duke and the governess needed 
not much penetration to perceive the increasing power awarded to 
liberal ideas. A signal instance was afforded by the immense in- 
fluence which the American War of Independence exercised towards 
this period over public opinion in France. 

All the latent republican tendencies of the nation burst forth with 
sudden and unexpected energy. The sympathy with the insurgent 
Americans was so strong and universal as to alarm the kinor and 
queen ; though they both favoured the American cause. In this 
matter, as in many other respects, their personal feelings were 



LA FAYETTE. 211 

wholly at variance with their policy. Joseph II. , the brother of 
Marie-Antoinette, and a reforming and philosophic sovereign, had, 
however, tact enough to perceive that it ill became an absolute 
monarch, like his brother-in-law, to assist and countenance repub- 
lican insurgents. He was sojourning at Versailles at the time when 
the American question proved, even in the royal palace, the all- 
absorbing topic of every conversation. A lady asked his opinion 
on the subject : " I must decline answering," he replied ; " my busi- 
ness is to be a royalist." The young Marquis of Lafayette, who 
was then only eighteen years of age, observed not the same cau- 
tion. He spoke, at the circle of the queen, openly and enthusiasti- 
cally in favour of the American cause. Marie-Antoinette greatly 
resented his indiscretion. She instinctively hated a war waged by 
the people against royalty. 

Young, wealthy, and bearer of a noble name, La Fayette might 
have aspired to the first offices of the court ; he preferred to these 
vain distinctions the dangers and the glory of a foreign war in 
favour of freedom and independence. In spite of the opposition of 
his family, and notwithstanding the displeasure of government, he 
openly declared that he at least would unite his standard to that of 
the Americans. A considerable number of the young French nobles 
shared his ardour, and followed him across the Atlantic, eager to 
shed their blood in the cause of plebeian liberty. The enthusiasm 
which animated the whole nation at this epoch, would now appear 
excessive and almost incredible. It is not, however, so difficult to 
understand it on reflection. Imbued as they were with republican 
and philosophic doctrines, the French had yet no politics of their 
own. Their energies were wasted away in the unproductive war- 
fare of literature, or in vain drawing-room discussions. Dreams, 
aspirations towards the future, brilliant and fruitless theories, were 
the only real occupation of daring and intelligent men, who 
blushed and murmured at the childish inactivity to which they were 
condemned. The American war, by engrossing every mind, acted 
as a temporary palliative ; but, whilst so doing, it fanned the internal 
flame which then consumed the very heart of France. The free- 
dom denied at home was at least worshipped abroad ; every token 
of admiration for America and her heroic deliverers was an indirect 
but energetic protest against the enslaved condition of France, and 
the blind neglect of her rulers. The noble La Fayette became the 
hero of the day : his bust was seen everywhere ; his name was 
pronounced by all with respect and enthusiasm. 

The extreme popularity of the young and chivalrous noble was 
divided and possessed, perhaps, even in a greater degree, by the 
plain Quaker, Franklin. When the American printer appeared in 
the Parisian circles, with his prim Quaker dress, unpowdered hair, 



212 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

and plain round hat, the contrast his sober attire offered to the rich 
and brilliant costume worn by both sexes, produced an extraordinary 
impression on the still frivolous society of that period. The Quaker 
garb henceforth became identified with primitive virtue and repub- 
lican simplicity. The quaintness of the doctor's manners ; his 
shrewdness, sagacity, and good sense; the calm firmness of his 
patriotism, were all idolized by the women ; whose enthusiasm 
greatly contributed to his success. Franklin bore his good fortune 
with great equanimity. " The account you have had of the vogue 
I am in here," he observes in one of his letters to his American 
friends, " has some truth. Perhaps few strangers in France have 
had the good fortune to be so universally popular. I hope to pre- 
serve, while I stay, the regard you mention of the French ladies ; 
for their society and conversation, when I have time to enjoy them, 
are extremely agreeable." He is still more explicit in a letter to 
his daughter: — "The clay medallion of me you say you gave to 
Mr. Hopkinson, was the first of the kind made in France. A va- 
riety of others have been made since of different sizes, some to be 
set to the lid of snuff-boxes, and some so small as to be worn in 
rings ; and the number sold is incredible. These, with the pictures, 
busts, and prints (of which copies upon copies are spread every- 
where), have made your father's face as well known as that of the 
moon; so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to 
run away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should ven- 
ture to show it." 

There is no exaggeration in the account given by Franklin of his 
popularity. Though the queen scarcely concealed her astonishment 
at the enthusiasm he excited, the Parisian ladies gave him several 
splendid fetes, to which all the elite of French society assisted. On 
one of those occasions, the most beautiful among the three hundred 
women present crowned the patriotic doctor with a laurel wreath, 
and then kissed him on either cheek. His bust was not only seen 
everywhere with that of Lafayette, but, even in the exhibition of 
Sevres porcelain, which took place in the palace of Versailles, me- 
dallions of Franklin, bearing the legend 

" Eripuit ccelo fulmen 
Sceptrumque tyrannis.'* 

were publicly sold. Everything became a la Franklin and a la 
Washington. The celebrated dancer, Vestris, who styled himself, 
in his Provencal dialect, le dime de la danse, and who openly declared 
that the age had only produced three great men — Frederick, Vol- 
taire, and himself! condescended to assume the name and character 
of Washington, when the rebellious opera-dancers, who were then 



DEATHS OF VOLTAIRE AND ROUSSEAU. 213 

quarrelling with their director, formed themselves into a congress (sic) 
at the house of Mademoiselle Guimard. 

Whilst in the triumph of America France already hailed her own 
revolution, she bade a last farewell to the chiefs of the old sceptic 
philosophy and the new democratic theories, Voltaire and Rousseau; 
who died in the spring of the year 1778, within a month of each 
other. 

After an absence of twenty-seven years, and in the eighty-fourth 
year of his age, Voltaire once more visited Paris. It was decided 
that he should not be received at court. Marie- Antoinette, less 
strictly devout than her husband, regretted being unable to behold 
one of the most illustrious men of his age. Voltaire was amply 
compensated for this slight of the court, by the extraordinary honours 
with which he was everywhere else received. He no sooner ap- 
peared in the theatre where his last piece, "Irene," was acted, than 
the whole audience rose and greeted him with long and enthusiastic 
acclamations. When the tragedy was over, the author's bust was 
discovered on the stage, and crowned with laurel, amidst repeated 
bursts of applause. Few men ever had a more passionate love of 
renown than Voltaire, and few had their desire so entirely fulfilled. 
Overpowered with emotion, he rose at length, on trembling limbs, 
and prepared to depart. His countenance was wasted and pale, but 
his fine dark eyes, now filled with tears, had preserved all their 
former softness and brilliancy. Men of the highest rank, and the 
most noble and beautiful women, crowded around him as he left his 
seat, and literally bore him down to his carriage. "Do you, then, 
want to kill me with joy?" he exclaimed, addressing those who sur- 
rounded him. He was led home by an enthusiastic crowd, bearing 
lighted torches, so that all might behold once more the idol of France. 
The streets resounded with shouts of triumph as the poet passed by. 

A few weeks after receiving these memorable honours, Voltaire 
died, on the 30th of May, 1778. The clergy refused to bury him; 
and, whilst his name was on every lip, the government forbade his 
death to be mentioned in the public journals — a strange instance of 
the wilful blindness of those by whom France was then ruled. 

A month after the death of Voltaire occurred that of Rousseau. 
No lofty and dazzling triumph awaited the obscure end of the apostle 
of democracy. Surrounded by the few friends whom his misan- 
thropic temper had not yet wholly estranged, he felt the hand of 
death stealing upon him at the close of a lovely summer's day. 
" Let me behold once more that glorious setting sun," was his last 
request; and, with his dying glance turned towards the western 
horizon, he passed away from life, his last look greeted by those 
pure harmonies of creation in which alone had his feverish and 
troubled spirit ever found repose. 



-. 

214 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Though Rousseau's death produced no visible sensation in French 
society, he left behind him a spirit far more potent than that of Vol- 
taire. To destroy a creed had been Voltaire's chosen mission ; to 
create a new society was that of Rousseau. On these two principles 
rested the whole theory of the French Revolution. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Unpopularity of Marie-Antoinette — Favours shown to Madame de Polignac — 
Her society — Ill-feeling between Madame de Genlis and the Queen. 

The American war, the visit of Voltaire to Paris, his triumph 
and death, gave a powerful impulse to public opinion. When Ame- 
rica was entirely free, and when peace had been concluded with 
England, this impulse was strongly felt. The attention of all then 
reverted to the internal state of France, which had, in the mean 
time, grown extremely critical. 

Louis XVI. was sincere and honest: he really intended to fulfil 
the hopes excited by his accession to the throne ; but those hopes 
were so extravagant, they implied so complete a change in every 
existing institution, that he soon considered the task of radical 
reform beyond his power. He sought, however, to remedy desperate 
evils with temporary palliatives; whilst the nation, irritated against 
the old abuses, daily manifested a more impatient and uncontrollable 
spirit. Within the first year of his reign, when the joy it had ex- 
cited was still at its height, there lurked through all this enthusiasm 
a secret feeling of discontent. In almost all the towns of France, 
serious riots, occasioned by the high price of corn, broke forth. 
Seditious and violent placards, urging the people to revolt, were 
every morning torn from the walls by the watchful police. Severe 
measures were taken to repress this revolt ; a few men were hanged ; 
the people subsided once more into their sullen silence, and the whole 
of this plebeian affair soon sank into oblivion. 

With the choice of his ministers arose the first embarrassment of 
Louis XVI. The power of D'Aiguillon fell, of course, with Madame 
du Barry. The young queen, possessed as yet of no influence, 
vainly sought to reinstate Choiseul. Her husband would not hear 
of the favourite of Madame de Pompadour. In this dilemma, the 
young monarch consulted his aunts, Mesdames. The fate of France 
then hung on the caprice of four women, who had never been allowed 
the least political power, and whose principles were directed by the 
liking or aversion they had conceived for the ministers whom the 



POLITICAL DISSENSIONS. 215 

whim of their father's mistresses successively raised to office. They 
hesitated for some time between two ex-ministers, Machault and 
Maurepas. Machault, severe and honest,- had made numerous 
enemies at court; Maurepas, a gay and brilliant courtier, had been 
disgraced for composing a satirical song against Madame de Pompa- 
dour : Mesdames decided in his favour. The frivolous old man, to 
whom age could not impart its" wisdom or even its gravity, was once 
more called to power. The king also sought the assistance of 
Malesherbes and Turgot, both members of the philosophic party. 
They were talented and zealous, but too intolerant and exclusive. 
Their attempts at premature reform only raised them a host of 
enemies ; and the men who sought no less than to regenerate a 
whole nation, fell before paltry court intriguers. This philosophic 
power was, nevertheless, a step taken in the right direction, since it 
acknowledged the supremacy of public opinion. The reforming 
ministers employed pamphleteers to expose and defend their opinions, 
and adopted other indirect methods of ascertaining how far the 
current of general feeling lay in their favour. The publicity thus 
given to the ministerial measures also occasioned very important 
debates in society. Necker, seconded by his wife, acted a leading 
part in those discussions; for serious dissensions divided even the 
philosophic party. Necker early opposed the plans of Turgot: a 
circumstance which obtained him the favour of those nobles whom 
the severity of Turgot's principles had alienated. The women, 
according to their custom, took an active share in this controversy, 
discussed political economy at their toilet, and dogmatically esta- 
blished the supremacy of whatever opinions they chose to favour. 

Marie-Antoinette also interfered in these important matters, but 
not with much judgment or success. Her sympathies for Choiseul 
first led her to favour the reformers ; she was, however, soon dis- 
gusted with their severity. The partisans of the old system of 
government, who accused her of inducing her husband to confide 
too exclusively to the economists, urged her to unite herself to 
Maurepas, in order to overthrow Turgot. She did so, and effected 
her object ; for already had she gained over her weak husband that 
fatal power which is linked with almost every error in the history of 
his reign. 

For a long time, the dazzling beauty and winning grace of Marie- 
Antoinette had remained powerless over the calm and phlegmatic 
Louis XVT. He allowed her no influence whatever during the first 
year of his reign. Mesdames, it is said, had prejudiced him against 
his wife, — the pledge of the hated Austrian alliance. The young 
monarch, like them, instinctively distrusted Marie-Antoinette. He 
knew so well her passionate attachment for the House of Austria, 
that, whenever any affair relative to it had to be transacted, he 



216 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

anxiously recommended his ministers not to mention the matter to 
the queen. However great her power may have been subsequently, 
it is certain that she could never exercise it either in favour of 
Choiseul or of her Austrian relatives. When the native coldness of 
Louis XVI. had been once subdued, he granted, however, conside- 
rable influence to his young and beautiful wife. After she had given 
heirs to the throne, the queen thought herself justified in interfering 
with political matters more openly than she had done till then. From 
the moment that this was perceived to be the case, her popularity 
rapidly declined. It was still at its height, when her brother, Joseph 
II., visited France, in the year 1777. They went together one night 
to the opera,' and entered the theatre as the actors, who performed 
Gluck's " Iphigenia," were singing the chorus — 

"Chantons, celebrons notre reine," &c. 

When Marie- Antoinette appeared in her box the whole house 
seized the apropos, and enthusiastically repeated " Chantons, cele- 
brons notre reine," &c. Overcome with emotion, the young queen 
bowed her head between her hands and burst into tears. Linked, 
as her name is now with scarcely paralleled misfortunes most heroi- 
cally endured, it is difficult to conceive how Marie-Antoinette could 
draw down on herself the deep hatred which grew in silent strength 
with every year of her unhappy reign, suddenly broke forth at the 
Revolution, and ultimately led her to the scaffold. Minute and almost 
trifling causes produced this result. 

The qualities of Marie- Antoinette were of those which misfortune 
calls forth, but which seldom shine in prosperity. Fickle and wil- 
ful in everything, she capriciously favoured or opposed ministers. 
Whilst the reformers were in fashion, they had her support ; she 
withdrew it when they had lost the approbation of the frivolous 
coteries who guided her opinions. 

This conduct, with a recklessness dangerous even in a queen, 
and a slight tendency to satire, added to the number of her enemies. 
Annoyed at the rigid punctiliousness of her lady of honour, Madame 
de Noailles, she petulantly named her " Madame l'Etiquette." The 
great and powerful family of the offended lady deeply resented this 
affront, and entered into a secret, and finally an open, opposition 
against the queen. Unfortunately for his wife, the graver Louis 
XVI. did not check her imprudent vivacity, and allowed her to in- 
dulge, without restraint, in all the gaieties of the court. Whilst the 
queen compromised the old stateliness of royalty by too great though 
innocent freedom, Louis was absorbed in his favourite geography, 
or studying smith- work with a locksmith named Gamain ; who as- 
sumed with him the tone and all the authority of a master. " The 
king," said Gamain, many years afterwards, " was good, forbear- 



UNPOPULARITY OF THE QUEEN. 217 

ing, timid, inquisitive, and addicted to sleep. He was fond of lock- 
making to excess ; and he concealed himself from the queen and the 
court to file and forge with me. In order to convey his anvil and 
my own backwards and forwards, we were obliged to use a thou- 
sand stratagems." 

Besides the influential Noailles, the queen estranged the severe 
religious party, headed by the Princess of Marsan, governess of 
Louis XVI. 's two sisters. This lady, offended at the ridicule with 
which Marie- Antoinette, whilst yet dauphiness, had spoken of the 
austere education she gave her pupils, dwelt, in her turn, with some 
asperity on the levity of the young Austrian princess; who found 
censors still more severe in the bosom of the royal family. Mes- 
dames, though good and amiable women, never liked their niece. 
She was an Austrian, and she favoured Choiseul, whom they de- 
tested. They deplored her frivolousness, her prodigality, and espe- 
cially her influence over her husband ; which had superseded their 
own. They sought not to injure her, but their ill-repressed blame 
swelled the voice of. general murmur. Her brother-in-law, Mon- 
sieur, (afterwards Louis XVIII.) and his wife, Madame, proved 
more active and formidable opponents. They envied the queen, 
and headed a sort of secret court opposition against her and Louis 
XVI. The Duke of Chartres was her professed enemy : he hated 
her; for to her and her influence he ascribed all the mortifications 
his ambition and pride had endured. 

However uninteresting these trifling court matters may justly 
seem at the present epoch, they then possessed a vast degree of im- 
portance. The wounded pride of Madame de Noailles, the discon- 
tent of Madame de Marsan and Mesdames, the envy of Monsieur, 
the resentment of the Duke of Chartres, considerably influenced 
public opinion with regard to Marie- Antoinette ; and that hatred 
which the people were gradually taught to feel for her very name, 
hastened the Revolution, and precipitated the fall of monarchy. 
Each frivolous action, light word, or look of scornful pride, — each 
feeling of enmity she had ever raised, — bore their fruit in time for 
the hapless queen. Evilly disposed, however, as were her enemies, 
she could only blame her own imprudence if their calumnies took 
effect. Few women, so critically placed as she was, sacrificed less 
than Marie-Antoinette to the spirit of the times. France was an 
absolute monarchy, but tempered, as a courtier once observed, by 
songs and epigrams : in other words, by the power of public opi- 
nion. If the queen had secured this mighty auxiliary on her side, 
she might well have braved her antagonists ; but, proud in the con- 
sciousness of innocence and sovereign power, she recklessly allowed 
them to enlist every class of society against her and her name. It 
was for the sake of conciliating a few individuals, and often a fe» 

19 



218 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

male favourite, that Marie-Antoinette thus estranged influential 
masses. She carried friendship to the height of a passion. Her 
love for the king, though sincere and devoted, could not absorb all 
her affections. The contrast between Louis XVI. and his beautiful 
wife suggested many uncharitable thoughts to their courtiers. Ca- 
lumny successively attributed to the Count of Artois, the Duke of 
Lauzun, and the Count of Fersen, a share in the favour of the 
queen. No proofs of her alleged errors have ever been produced* 
Her favourite attendant, Madame Campan, when pressed on this 
subject, many years after the death of her royal mistress, confessed 
that Marie-Antoinette had indeed once experienced a deep and un- 
happy attachment, but averred with solemn energy that this invo- 
luntary feeling had ever remained pure and unsullied. The restraints 
which duty and self-respect thus imposed upon her feelings, render- 
ed the queen more unreserved in the manifestations of her friend- 
ship. Madame de Maille, the Princess of Lamballe, and Madame 
de Polignac successively attracted her notice. They were all three 
gentle and beautiful women, but the affection she felt for them proved 
very fatal to the popularity of Marie- Antoinette. 

Madame de Polignac was disinterested, and really loved the queen 
for her own sake ; but she was surrounded by a host of needy, 
grasping, and ambitious relatives, who speculated in a shameful 
manner on the friendship of Marie- Antoinette. Titles, pensions, 
favours, and lucrative posts, were showered down on the happy 
favourite and her friends. Her sister-in-law, the Countess Diana of 
Polignac, an ugly, overbearing woman, generally detested, was said 
to rule her completely ; to instruct her every morning concerning 
her behaviour with the queen, and to give her a list of the favours 
to be asked in the course of the day. So insolent did this Countess 
Diana become, that even the gentle Princess Elizabeth, to whom 
she was lady of honour, could not endure her tyranny ; and, in 
order to escape from her, took refuge at Saint-Cyr. It was only on 
the personal intercession of Louis XVI., who shared all his wife's 
weakness for the Polignacs, that harmony was restored between 
Madame Elizabeth and her imperious attendant. 

The lucrative favours bestowed on the Princess of Lamballe, 
and especially on Madame de Polignac and her friends, caused 
much jealousy at court. The proud and powerful Noailles looked 
down with haughty displeasure on their upstart rivals. The politi- 
cal power which Marie-Antoinette granted to the Polignacs was 
viewed with equal disfavour by all those who could not hope to 
share it. If she ruled the king, the Polignacs ruled her. Necker, 
in the account he subsequently gave of his second ministry, com- 
plained that the measures he proposed to the king had to be sub- 
mitted to the queen, the princes, Madame de Polignac, her friends, 



INFLUENCE OF MADAME DE POLIGNAC. 219 

and even to Marie-Antoinette's femme de chambre, Madame Cam- 
pan, before ihey could be carried into effect. Marie-Antoinette 
was, however, friendly to Necker. She sought to prevent him 
from resigning in 1781 ; but it was by employing personal entreaty, 
and not by obtaining for him the post he had asked, and which his 
services certainly deserved. When Necker had resigned his autho- 
rity, the queen desired to have a private interview with him, for the 
purpose of inducing him to remain in office. A crowd of distin- 
guished persons waited at the door of her apartment, in order to 
learn the result of her interference. She soon came forth, with a 
sad and troubled countenance : " He refuses absolutely !" she said 
with a sigh. Necker's resignation — the work of Maurepas — was 
indeed considered in the light of a public calamity. Marie-Antoi- 
nette — offended perhaps' at not having conquered the resolve of the 
austere Genevese, and probably influenced By her friends — capri- 
ciously withdrew her favour from Necker, and strenuously opposed 
his recall at a later period. 

A vague consciousness of her failing popularity, the knowledge 
of the great social power which women then possessed, and the 
wish of sharing in this influence, induced Marie-Antoinette to open 
to her friends the drawing-room of Madame de Polignac, to whom 
she had given an apartment in the palace at Versailles. " Here," 
she often observed with a smile, " 1 am no longer the queen : I am 
myself." She wished for the power thus exercised to be exclu- 
sively the power of the woman. But, beautiful and attractive as 
she was, Marie-Antoinette acted imprudently in thus casting away 
the prestige of rank. She was not sufficiently brilliant or witty to 
rival the women who presided over the societies of the day ; unless, 
indeed, she opened, like them, the saloon of her friend to the 
men : without whom those societies would, after all, have been in- 
sipid. She did not do so; and, though honoured with the royal 
presence, the society of Madame de Polignac was accordingly con- 
sidered most unentertaining. The queen possessed little conversational 
talent ; her quiet friend had none — " For," as the envious courtiers 
never failed, indeed, to remark, "the royal favourites were all com- 
monplace women." This was true ; and it confirmed the report 
that, notwithstanding a few happy repartees, Marie-Antoinette was 
not herself very clever or intellectual. She disliked serious conver- 
sation, and excluded it wherever she appeared. The eighteenth 
century never produced a less literary coterie than that over which 
she presided. The agreeable Madame de Boufflers, wishing to ex- 
cuse herself from complying with a request addressed to her by 
Madame de Polignac, did so in a polite letter, mingled with poetry. 
Madame de Polignac showed the verses to her friends, who criticised 
them very bitterly. Their remarks being repeated to Madame de 



220 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Boufflers, she replied, with a smile, " I regret that they find the 
verses so bad, for the sake of poor Racine ; for they are by him, 
and not by me." Superficial wits, like Rivarol, were received at 
the soirees of Madame de Polignac, in order to supply the deficien- 
cies of the ladies. When the queen gave a concert, Gluck came to 
accompany her singing. The old Duchess of Grammont — favoured 
on account of her brother, Choiseul — the Count of Artois, the 
Count of Vaudreuil, Rivarol, and the friends of the Polignac family, 
were amongst the few members of this society ; which, with little 
of the wit of coteries, had their worst fault — exclusion. 

The courtiers whom Marie-Antoinette refused to admit became so 
many covert enemies. They spoke with great bitterness on the im- 
propriety of her conduct in thus mingling with untitled literary men, 
and in singing to the accompaniment of a mere artist like Gluck. 
They said, and not unjustly, that the evenings which Marie-Antoi- 
nette devoted to her private amusements were abstracted from the 
court. Constituted as French society then was, this was a serious 
objection— one which, had she not been so imprudent, would have 
had weight with Marie-Antoinette. What, indeed, without the pre- 
sence of the queen, were all the fetes, pomps, pleasures, and boasted 
glories of Versailles 1 When Marie-Lecsinska adopted, through ex- 
treme devotion, a course somewhat similar, her absence from the 
court was not felt. She was queen in name only ; Madame de Pom- 
padour had all the reality and homage of queenly power. But such 
was not the case with Marie- Antoinette. The king loved no other 
woman ; she reigned alone over the court; and when she abandoned 
it, to seek the quiet drawing-room of Madame de Polignac, the cour- 
tiers thought themselves justified in filling the palace with upbraiding 
murmurs. It was, indeed, folly in the queen to think that she could 
unite all the power and splendour of rank to the ease and freedom 
of privacy. The discontent of the noblesse soon reached the mid- 
dle and inferior classes, between whom and the upper ranks there 
now existed a much more rapid communication than of yore. Al- 
though, beyond the precincts of the court, the favour of Madame de 
Polignac could inspire no personal jealousy, a deep feeling of irrita- 
tion was nevertheless created by the immense sums she was supposed 
to draw from the State. The favourites of kings had seldom been 
popular in France ; but those of queens had always been odious. 

Besides the courtiers and the people, Marie-Antoinette also alien- 
ated a numerous and powerful class, — the artists and literary men, 
whom she neglected to patronise. She read little, and only light 
literature. She, whose part in history was to be so dark and tragic, 
never perused those historical narratives whence she might, per- 
chance, have derived a few useful lessons. Marie-Antoinette has 
very erroneously been represented as a learned and accomplished 



INFLUENCE OF MADAME DE POLIGNAC. 221 

princess. She frankly confessed to Madame Campan that she had 
never understood one word of the Latin harangues she uttered in 
Vienna, and had not even touched the beautiful drawings said by 
Marie-Theresa to be the production of her favourite daughter. The 
courtiers were somewhat mortified at the queen's evident ignorance, 
which all her tact and grace could not disguise. When she acted 
in private. theatricals with her brothers-in-law and their wives, many 
of the spectators observed, loud enough to be heard, that the acting 
was royally bad (royalement mal joue). The queen was still more 
unfortunate with regard to those pieces which were acted before her, 
and first produced by her command. In spite of her patronage — 
perhaps because they were patronised by her — they almost always 
fell before the Parisian audiences. She was very keenly alive to 
the slight thus put upon her taste, and which probably arose from 
a feeling of resentment ; for if Madame de Pompadour had been 
blamed for doing so little in favour of literature, it was nevertheless 
acknowledged that infinitely less was done by Marie- Antoinette. 

The Polignacs, though as indifferent as their mistress to such 
subjects, once chose, however, to patronise an author and a comedy : 
the author was the unprincipled Beaumarchais — the comedy, the 
cynical production known as the " Marriage of Figaro ;" in itself 
the herald of a revolution. It was a characteristic feature of 
the times, that this play, which attacked society and government 
with an immoral degree of levity, and yet with much truth and 
power, should have been patronised by the friends of Marie-Antoi- 
nette. The censors, having prohibited it from being acted, Beau- 
marchais read the piece to a circle, of influential friends, by whom 
it was pronounced admirable. Every one accordingly wished to 
hear it, and every one, thanks to the author's complaisance, had 
heard it ere long. Nothing but the prohibited comedy was spoken 
of throuofhout all Paris. The circle of Madame de Polignac was in 
raptures with " Figaro," and incessantly teased the king to grant 
the permission for having it performed. Louis, who had heard it in 
private, refused, and sent a lettre de cachet, forbidding even the 
private performance of the comedy, at the moment it was going to 
take place before an eager and fashionable circle. This prohibition 
excited the most vehement indignation. The king was styled tyrant 
and oppressor, by the very courtiers whose reactionary feelings 
afterwards caused his ruin. Beaumarchais exclaimed in his anger, 
" The piece shall be acted, even though it should be in the very 
choir of Notre Dame !" He consented, however, to soften down a 
few passages; and, with the aid of the Vaudreuils and the Polignacs, 
succeeded in wringing the long-wished-for permission from the king. 
"Figaro" obtained almost unexampled success,- and the seventy- 
second performance was as crowded as the first. The court did not 

19* 



222 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

dare to suspend the representations of the comedy, but unwisely 
imprisoned the author ! 

The permission of acting the " Marriage of Figaro" had been so 
reluctantly granted, that no one thanked the Polignacs for their 
share in obtaining it. The queen, though she had nothing to do 
with this affair, was blamed by those who feared the effect of the 
profligate comedy. Whatever occurred, ill fortune attended her 
still. Even the encouragement which she gave to music and her 
countryman Gluck, was productive of a strife memorable. in the 
annals of French society. Though the genius of Gluck was recog- 
nised, the party opposed to the queen promptly brought forward, as 
his rival, the Italian Piccim. Two inimical factions henceforth 
divided the town. In the streets, in coffee-houses, private dwellings, 
and academies, the important point was warmly discussed. " Are 
you a Gluckist or a Piccinist?" was now a question universally 
addressed : and, according as the answer might be, friendships 
were confirmed or angrily dissolved. The quarrels of the Jansenists 
and the Molinists, or even those of the philosophers and the devotees, 
had never possessed so much importance, or been marked with half 
the acrimony now raised in the name of the gentlest of all arts. 

Gluck and music were the only objects of Marie-Antoinette's en- 
couragements. She neglected painters and their productions, though 
both were patronised by several of the Parisian ladies. Madame de 
Genlis, in particular, was always surrounded by some of the most 
talented artists of the day. Between this lady and the queen there 
unfortunately existed a very bitter animosity. In general, Marie* 
Antoinetre did not like the women of her time, and was not liked by 
them. When she gave birth to her first child (the Duchess of An- 
gouleme), the Duchess of Chartres, on paying her the customary 
visit, besought her majesty to accept the excuses of Madame de 
Genlis, who was too ill to appear. Marie-Antoinette haughtily 
replied, that although the celebrity of Madame de Genlis might cause 
her absence from court to be noticed, her rank did not authorize her 
to send in excuses. Madame de Genlis had already been slighted 
by the queen, who disliked her character, and cared little for her 
writings; wounded to the quick by this last affront, she criticised 
with some acrimony the tastes and habits of Marie- Antoinette. The 
queen spoke with equal asperity of Madame de Genlis's conduct and 
literary productions. Courtiers embittered the quarrel. Those who 
wished to render themselves agreeable tc the queen, discovered that 
they could do so by turning Madame de Genlis into ridicule; whilst 
others, equally uncharitable, immediately repeated to the authoress all 
the keen epigrams and satirical remarks uttered, at her expense, in the 
apartment of Marie-Antoinette. This treatment was greatly resented 
by Madame de Genlis, who was easily irritated, and not so easily ap- 



DISPOSITION OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE. 223 

peased. She disagreed with the rigid Madame Necker, and kept up 
a vehement quarrel with her impassioned daughter; she wrangled for 
a long time with the aristocratic party, and ultimately fell out with the 
revolutionists. The philosophers she held in utter detestation, since 
the Academy, instead of bestowing the Montyon prize on one of her 
works, gave it to Madame D'Epinay's " Conversations d'Emilie." 
The old Duchess of Grammont, whose temper was probably soured 
by disappointed ambition, confessed herself delighted at this result, 
and declared, — " That she hoped Madame de Genlis would either 
die of spite, which would be a highly fortunate event, or, that, if she 
survived her disgrace, she would, at least, write a good satire against 
the philosophers which w r ould prove almost as amusing." 

Though Madame de Genlis was not generally liked, her position 
and talents gave her great influence. It would have been politic even 
for the queen of France to have secured her good will : an easy task, 
when a look and a smile from Marie-Antoinette were counted high 
favours! But the queen would not stoop to conciliation. She pre- 
ferred braving the most influential women of the day to the higher 
triumph of subduing them by grace and gentleness. The austere 
and virtuous Madame Necker did not stand higher in her favour 
than the pliant Madame de Genlis. Louis XVI. shared her feelings: 
he accused Necker of allowing; himself to be governed bv his wife, 
"who wanted to make of France a quarrelsome republic like her 
own Geneva." This was a general impression. Some of the cari- 
catures of the day represented Necker sitting at his dinner, whilst 
his wife stood by him, on account of her infirmity, and read him a 
moral treatise. Madame Necker was far too prudent to display the 
open animosity of Madame de Genlis, but she blamed the frivolous- 
ness and imprudence of the queen, in language which, though 
covertly expressed, was far more effective. 

It is sad, and true, that though Marie-Antoinette could inspire her 
chosen friends with feelings of heroic devotedness to her person, she 
never knew how to conciliate the general sympathies of her own sex. 
Proud and unbending, when she saw her share of popularity and 
social influence pass into the hands of other women, she made des- 
perate efforts to win back the failing power; but she would never 
stoop to accept it from those whom a few gracious words might have 
rallied to her cause and made her own for ever. 



224 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER V. 

Confused State of French Society — The Diamond Necklace — Ministers Favoured 
by the Queen — Madame de Stael — Madame de Condorcet. 

On the eve of her great Revolution — that is to say, from 1781 to 
1789 — France was in that state of confusion and disorder which 
generally ushers in deep social convulsions. The most opposite 
principles were recognised and adopted ; for, in that wide chaos, 
though there might be much tumult, there was, as yet, no strife. 
The contrasts which this state of society presented were often full 
of singularity. 

The French nobles who returned from the American war, found 
the popularity of Franklin and Washington superseded by the An- 
glomania. This was only a seeming contradiction. The French 
had willingly inflicted a severe blow on England ; but they loved 
English freedom and constitutional monarchy. Unable to enjoy 
either, they adopted at least English customs. English clubs, horses, 
racing, jockeys, and even high boots and plain cloth coats, were not 
thought unworthy of imitation. The clubs were not political at first ; 
but, by separating the two sexes, they proved fatal to female influence, 
and changed the spirit of society. It lost its frivolous polish ; the 
graceful effeminacy, which had prevailed so long, gave way to a 
new power and energy, well fitted to prepare the nation for the re- 
volutionary outbreak. 

This revolution was anticipated by all ; but, unlike other social 
contests, it was expected to be both pacific and pure. Political dis- 
sensions, the blood-stained scaffold, foreign war, and civil strife, with 
all the selfishness, treachery, and fierce passions they arouse, were 
unsuspected by the enthusiastic innovators. The nobles spoke of the 
approaching struggle as of a new fashion, introduced and patronised 
by them. They neither regretted the past nor feared the future. 
Surrounded by all the privileges of feudal power, they had discarded 
its flattering customs for the independence of English manners. 
Their lands and vassals gave wealth and influence ; their birth be- 
stowed distinctions unearned by toil and long patience. They could 
afford to be philosophers, friends of men, and even democrats. This 
anomaly was only one of the signs of the times. Philosophy, the 
spirit of old chivalry, republican enthusiasm, licentiousness, and 
vain affectation of sentiment, often characterized the same individual, 
even as they characterized the whole nation. 



COXFOED STATE OF FEENCH SOCIETY. 225 

A *ouch of mystic enthusiasm nevertheless pervaded all this con- 
fusion and levity. Mesmer, who perverted to unworthy uses the 
phenomena of animal magnetism, and Cagliostro, whose wild as- 
sertions of supernatural power now excite only a smile of contempt, 
found numerous disciples in the land of scepticism. The name of 
the latter notorious charlatan then bestowed a new interest on the 
memorable affair of the diamond necklace, which brought in contact 
the names of a profligate cardinal, a noted intriguer, a courtesan, 
two common sharpers, and the queen of France ! 

The origin of an event so fatal to the fair name of Marie-Antoinette 
as woman, and to her dignity as queen, lay in the enmity she had 
long entertained against the Cardinal de Rohan. She knew that, 
whilst he was ambassador in Vienna, the cardinal had opposed her 
marriage with the dauphin, and she came to France greatly irritated 
against him. In a letter to D'Aiguillon, Rohan ridiculed the affected 
sorrow of Marie-Theresa for the partition of Poland. D'Aiguillon 
showed the letter to Madame du Barry : she took it from him, and, 
being then in open hostility to the dauphiness, communicated it to all 
her friends. Marie-Antoinette understood that the letter had been 
originally addressed by the cardinal to Madame du Barry herself. 
This wounded her to the quick. When she became queen, and the 
ambassador returned from Vienna, she treated him with marked dis- 
favour. It was said, and believed, that there also existed another 
motive for this pointed aversion, and that the cardinal — a vain, hand- 
some man, noted for the profligacy of his conduct — had early con- 
ceived a passion for Marie-Antoinette, which she perceived, and thus 
severely checked. Her coldness nearly drove him to despair. It 
was in vain that, with almost boundless wealth at his command, he 
could revel in all the luxurious pleasures his unscrupulous conscience 
so freely allowed : in vain that he belonged to one of the first fami- 
lies of the land, and held the highest dignities of the Gallican church, 
with broad lands and many fair revenues : so long as he lacked the 
sunshine of the queen's smiles, and Versailles remained forbidden 
ground for him, life was shorn of all joy and delight. Ten years 
passed away, and wrought no change in this strange infatuation. 
The cardinal caught distant glimpses of the queen, and hoped against 
all hope for the return of her favour, whilst she relentlessly persisted 
in the manifestations of her haughty displeasure. 

A clever intriguing woman, named the Countess of La Mothe 
\- alois. who represented herself as being descended from the royal 
house of Valois, and who was so in reality, audaciously resolved to 
profit by this weakness of the cardinal. She was pretty, insinuating, 
and easily succeeded. She made him believe that she secretly pos- 
sessed the favour of the queen, and offered to reconcile him to her. 
He eagerly accepted, and wrote a long letter of justification, which 



226 WOMAN IX FRANCE. 

Madame La Mothe undertook to deliver. She soon returned him a 
forged reply, in which Marie-Antoinette was made to profess a com- 
plete alteration in his favour, although she declined, for prudential 
reasons, to see him yet, or manifest any external change in her 
bearing. The excess of the Cardinal's joy rendered him even more 
credulous than he was by nature; although he believed in Cagliostro, 
alchymy, and the philosopher's stone. He had seen Madame de La 
Mothe enter and leave the palace through private entrances, and on 
this authority he readily admitted all that she told him concerning 
her intimacy with the queen. 

Madame de La Mothe derived considerable sums from the Cardinal 
de Rohan, through means of forged letters, in which the queen re- 
quested him to assist her with various loans of money for acts of 
private charity. The sums, w 7 hich the delighted cardinal eagerly 
forwarded, were all entrusted to Madame de La Mothe, as well as 
two hundred letters which he addressed to Marie-Antoinette. When 
he at length became impatient for more substantial marks of the 
queen's good graces, Madame de La Mothe bribed a tall, handsome 
courtesan of the Palais Royal, named D'Oliva, to take the part of 
Marie-Antoinette ; whom she greatly resembled. This girl was 
easily persuaded that the queen wished her, in a frolic, to assume 
her character in the gardens of Trianon, and exchange a few words 
with a nobleman. 

On a dark evening of the month of July, 1784, D'Oliva, attired 
in white like the queen, was introduced by Madame de La Mothe 
into the gardens of Trianon, where, seated in a shady bower, she 
awaited the approach of the cardinal. He came, and sank down at 
her feet in a transport of joy. He had only time, however, to take 
a rose w T ith which she presented him, and listen to a few gracious 
words which fell from her lips, when her accomplices made a sound 
of approaching footsteps, and thus disturbed the interview. The false 
queen rose in well-feigned alarm, and hastily retired, leaving the 
cardinal chagrined at the brevity of this meeting, but full of intoxica- 
ting hopes ; for, in his soaring wishes, he aspired both to the favour 
of the queen and the love of the woman. The sums which Madame 
de La Mothe had drawn from the cardinal enabled her to live in 
handsome style, and to persuade various persons that she was really 
in favour with the queen. Boehmer, the jeweller, besought her to 
persuade her majesty to purchase the necklace of magnificent 
diamonds, which he had collected together with infinite toil and 
trouble for Madame du Barry. A writer, whose depth and penetra- 
tion have thrown much light on this doubtful subject, thus elaborately 
describes this queenly ornament : — 

'• A row of seventeen glorious diamonds, large almost as filberts, 
encircle, not too tightly, the neck a first time. Looser, gracefully 



THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. 227 

fastened thrice to these, a three-wreathed festoon, and pendants 
enough, simple, pear-shaped, multiple star-shaped, and clustering 
amorphous encircle it, enwreathe it a second time. Loosest of all, 
softly flowing round from behind, in priceless catenary, rush down 
two broad threefold rows, seem to knot themselves, round a very 
queen of diamonds, on the bosom : then rush on, again separated, 
as if there were length in plenty; the very tassels of them were a 
fortune for some men. And now, lastly, two other inexpressible 
threefold rows, also with their tassels, will, when the necklace is put 
on and clasped, unite themselves behind into a doubly inexpressible 
sixfold row ; and so stream down, together or asunder, over the 
hind-neck, we may fancy, like lambent zodiacal, or aurora-borealis 
fire."* 

This magnificent necklace was worth 1,800,000 livres. The 
queen had several times refused to purchase it, thinking it too costly 
and profitless an ornament. " We have more need of seventy-fours 
than of necklaces," she once nobly replied to Boehmer's earnest so- 
licitations. Madame de la Mothe, to whom he applied, seemed dis- 
inclined to interfere in the matter; but carelessly hinted that the 
Cardinal of Rohan might effect the object he so ardently desired. 
She had already insinuated to the cardinal, that Marie-Antoinette 
longed passionately for the splendid necklace, without daring to 
purchase it openly. Rohan eagerly offered to render her this ser- 
vice. Many seeming difficulties were raised ; but at last Madame 
de la Mothe said she had procured the consent of the queen, and, on 
the 29th of January, 1785, an agreement was drawn up between 
the Cardinal of Rohan and Boehmer, by which the latter agreed to 
deliver up the necklace to the cardinal for the sum of 1,600,000 
livres. This agreement was taken to Versailles by Madame de la 
JVIothe, who returned it with the addition, Bon — Marie- Antoinette de 
France. Neither the cardinal nor the court-jeweller noticed that 
the words de France — which belonged to the royal family of France 
only — could not have been used by an Austrian princess. On the 
following day the necklace was delivered to Madame de la Mothe by 
the cardinal. Cagliostro, in whom he placed great trust, was con- 
sulted on this occasion, and prophesied that this affair would end 
most fortunately for his eminence. 

Madame de la Mothe's husband in the mean time took the dia- 
monds to England, and there parted with them separately. No- 
thing was discovered until the first instalment became due. The 
money not being paid at the appointed time, it was claimed by Boeh- 
mer. The queen denied all knowledge of the necklace ; an expla- 
nation ensued, and the matter was immediately laid by Marie- 

* Carlyle's Essays, vol. v. p. 20. 



228 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Antoinette before her husband. On the 15th of August, 1785, 
which was also Assumption-day, the Cardinal of Rohan was sum- 
moned to the royal presence. His confused manner and hesitating 
replies conveyed to Louis XVI., who shared his wife's prejudices 
against him, a strong impression of his guilt. The shame of having 
been so grossly duped might, however, have explained the cardinal's 
bearing. The king ordered him to be taken into custody : he had 
time, nevertheless, to say a few words in German to his attendant, 
who hurried to Paris, and reached his master's hotel before the 
officers of justice. The most important of the cardinal's papers, 
such as his correspondence with Madame de la Mothe, and the 
forged letters of the queen, were instantly destroyed by his confi- 
dant, the Abbe Georgee. 

The Cardinal de Rohan's trial, in which Madame de la Mothe, 
d'Oliva, and Cagliostro were also implicated, lasted nine months, 
and created immense scandal. The queen was accused of being 
the accomplice of Madame de la Mothe, and of having joined in this 
intrigue for the purpose of ruining the cardinal; who, instead of 
being ridiculed as a foolish dupe, was elevated to the dignity of a 
victim of court machinations, and of Marie-Antoinette's implacable 
hatred. The whole aristocracy exclaimed against the enormity of 
bringing a man of his rank to trial. Madame de Marsan, though 
nearly allied to him, alone behaved nobly, for she purchased and 
suppressed one of the numerous libels against the queen : to whom' 
this trait was never even known. 

This trial did not only give rise to the most injurious surmises 
against Marie- Antoinette, it inflicted on monarchy a deep irremedi- 
able stain. The queen might be pure as snow ; but the prestige of 
royalty had been broken. The church suffered more deeply still : 
the spectacle of one of its first dignitaries leaguing himself with a 
man like Cagliostro, and a woman like Madame de la Mothe, in 
order to obtain the favour of the Queen of France, was a disgrace 
which deeply affected the sincere religious party. They felt that 
her own faithless servants were the greatest foes of religion. 

The Parliament acquitted the cardinal; less, it is said, from a 
belief in his innocence, than from a feeling of animosity against the 
queen. On learning the acquittal, Marie-Antoinette wept bitterly. 
How deeply must the consciousness of her failing power have come 
over her then 1 Madame de la Mothe was publicly whipped and 
branded. She afterwards escaped to England : her end is a mystery 
still. Notwithstanding his acquittal, the cardinal was ordered to 
retire to Auvergne. He afterwards became a member of the Con- 
stituent Assembly, and ultimately emigrated. 

The tears which Marie-Antoinette shed, on hearing of the acquittal 
of De Rohan, did not subdue her haughty temper. She continued 



IMPOLITIC CONDUCT OF THE QUEEN. 229 

to place herself in opposition to the general will, until she brought 
down on her head the vengeance of the whole nation. Still yield- 
ing to the advice of the Polignac coterie, she succeeded in having 
Calonne appointed minister. Dexterous, unprincipled, holding as 
his first political dogma, that to curtail the magnificence (i. e. extra- 
vagance) of royalty was rank heresy, Calonne was indeed the man 
after a true courtier's own heart. Places and pensions were freely 
showered down during his prodigal rule; which hastened — but 
could scarcely render more certain — the ruin of the State. Calonne 
was at first in great favour with the queen. He encouraged her 
extravagance, instead of checking it like Turgot or Necker. She 
once sent to consult him on a financial matter of some importance. 
" Tell her majesty," he promptly replied to the messenger, " that if 
what she asks is difficult, it is already done; if it is impossible, it 
shall be done." Thus encouraged, the queen, notwithstanding the 
impoverished state of the finances, purchased the magnificent seat 
of Saint Cloud from the Duke of Orleans : a step which was much 
censured. Ere long, however, she became dissatisfied with Calonne ; 
her pride was wounded at the undue ascendency the Polignacs 
sought to exercise over her. She perceived too late the difference 
between a favourite and a friend. She was also hurt to see that 
Madame de Polignac became cordial or distant in her behaviour ac- 
cording to the favours granted or refused to her friends. If she 
loved her still, it was because she knew her nature to be pure and 
good : but the charm of their intercourse had vanished. The extra- 
vagance of Calonne at length compelled him to retire from office : 
he left the finances in a deplorable condition. It was generally ex- 
pected that Necker would be recalled ; but such was not the case. 
The queen once more yielded to the fatal advice of a favourite, and 
her old preceptor, the Abbe de Vermond, mainly contributed to the 
appointment of Brienne, Archbishop of Sens. 

M. de Sens, as he was generally called, according to the custom 
which designated an ecclesiastical dignitary by the name of his see, 
was a tall, handsome man, of stately presence and courtly manners, 
beneath which he veiled a spirit of unconquerable ambition and 
pride. His conduct was dissolute ; his religious principles verged 
on atheism. He had urged Louis XVI. to check the freedom of the 
press, and persecute the Protestants. He was a great friend of the 
philosophers whilst still Archbishop of Toulouse, and frequented the 
evening parties of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, and the suppers of 
Madame du DefFand. When Mademoiselle de Lespinasse died, she 
left him, as a proof of her friendship, a few trifling debts to pay. 
The popularity of the Archbishop of Sens was considerable with the 
women of his time, and he availed himself of it with infinite address. 
His brother, M. de Brienne, had married a wealthy heiress, on 

20 



230 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

whose rich dowry, and the archbishop's ecclesiastical revenues, they 
lived with great state and splendour in the handsome castle of 
Brienne. All the luxuries of art and wealth abounded in this mag- 
nificent residence. Brienne was thronged with visiters ; men of 
fashion, and the most beautiful women of the day, hastened to enjoy 
the clelights of a place where balls, comedies, and even easy lectures 
on natural philosophy, were daily prepared for their amusement. 
Those persons who had been so fortunate as to receive an invitation, 
and to spend a few days at this fairy palace, spoke of it with enthu- 
siasm, and spread everywhere the renown of the polite archbishop. 
Marie-Antoinette, with her usual frivolousness, concluded that the 
object of this general approbation must necessarily be capable of 
governing the State, and yielded to him her share of influence. 

The Archbishop of Sens immediately assumed the imperious tone 
of a second Richelieu. His measures proved almost as obnoxious to 
the nobles as to the people. Several women, influenced by motives 
of private pique, withdrew their support from him, and contributed to 
his unpopularity. Amongst these was Madame de Coigny, noted for 
her beauty, harsh voice, and caustic wit. So great was her power, 
that Marie-Antoinette somewhat jealously said, " I am only Queen 
of Versailles ; Madame de Coigny is Queen of Paris." This lady 
had. spent some time at Brienne, and greatly desired to act a con- 
spicuous part in one of the plays performed for the amusement of 
the guests. Her disagreeable voice induced the archbishop to evade 
the request. She never forgave him, and became his professed enemy. 
After a series of measures which only proved his total incapacity 
for affairs, the archbishop ended by convoking the States-General 
(8th of August, 1788), and retiring from the ministry. Few 
men in office had rendered themselves so heartily detested ; yet the 
queen, with her usual haughtiness and imprudence, affected to treat 
him with more favour than ever. Yielding to her earnest entreaties, 
Louis XVI. solicited and obtained from the Pope a cardinal's hat 
for the discarded minister; to whom Marie-Antoinette sent her por- 
trait, and addressed several letters expressive of her friendship and 
esteem. These letters were subsequently published in 1789, and 
did the queen infinite injury. They tended to show how opposed 
she was to the spirit of reform, and led many to believe that her 
fatal influence might cause her weak husband to share in those 
feelings. 

After the dismissal of the archbishop, Necker was recalled. His 
popularity had considerably increased since 1781. The weakness 
of his system, which consisted in reforming the internal condition of 
France by the administration suited to a private household, or to a 
banking-house, was not so forcibly felt then as now, when nations 
have passed through the bitter experience of revolutions. Hia extra- 



MADAME DE STAEL. 231 

ordinary popularity was at its height when he entered on the duties 
of his second ministry, as the recognised advocate of the libera] prin- 
ciples which agitated the whole of French society. 

The power of Necker was considerably strengthened by the in- 
fluence which his daughter was beginning to acquire as Madame de 
Stael. In 1786, Germaine Necker, who was then in her twentieth 
year, married the Baron of Stael-Holstein, ambassador of Sweden at 
the French court. He was a handsome, commonplace man, con- 
siderably older than her, but his rank, high birth, and Protestant 
faith, recommended him to her parents. Germaine Necker, seeing 
how ardently they desired this union, married M. de Stael from feel- 
ings of duty. Shortly after her marriage the new ambassadress was 
presented at court. Her literary celebrity caused her appearance 
there to excfte a good deal of attention. It was noticed, as an ex- 
traordinary circumstance, that she missed one of her courtesies, and 
that the trimming of her dress was partly unfastened. A few days 
afterwards, she paid a visit to the Duchess of Polignac, and forgot 
her cap in her carriage: she was in consequence stigmatized as a 
verv strange, eccentric woman. 

The extraordinary genius of Madame de Stael was already fully 
recognised. The Count of Guibert, the pitiless lover of Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse, was one of her most impassioned admirers, and thus 
portrayed her, under the name of Zulme: " Zulme is only twenty 
years of age, and she is already the most celebrated priestess of 
Apollo. Her incense is to him the most welcome: her hymns are 

those he prizes best Her large dark eyes sparkle with genius; 

her ebon hair falls in waving locks on her shoulders. Her features 
are more characteristic than delicate, and bear the impress of a higher 
destiny than that which usually falls to the lot of her sex." 

Young and striking in aspect, if not beautiful, — though many 
found beauty in her intellectual countenance, lit up by a look in 
which beamed all the inspiration she afterwards ascribed to her 
imaginary Corinne, — Madame de Stael was destined to exercise a 
more than common power. She came at the time most fit for the 
part she took. Her passion and energy would have been superflu- 
ous in the frivolous world of which her youth beheld the last traces, 
but they suited well the stormy times on which France was entering. 
Her rank and origin were likewise in her favour: the nobly born 
could associate freely with the Swedish ambassadress ; the liberals 
saw in her the daughter of the popular minister, Necker. But her 
genius, and its irresistible fascinations, were arguments more power- 
ful still. Ere long, the most eminent men of the day eagerly 
gathered around a woman whose admirable and enthusiastic impro- 
visations on political and literary subjects held them all spell-bound. 
This display has been censured as unfeminine in Madame de Stael; 



232 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

but it was always redeemed in the opinion of those who knew and 
heard her, by being so perfectly unaffected and genuine. It was a 
great and glorious gift freely exercised : eloquence was a part of her 
being ; to divest herself from it would have been impossible. M. de 
Narbonne, Talleyrand, the old Duchess of Grammont, Lafayette, 
Sieyes, Madame de Lauzun, the Princess of Beauvau, Madame de 
Poix, Vergniaud, and most of the men who afterwards became the 
Girondins, Madame de Coigny, then in open hostility with the queen, 
successively appeared in her drawing-room, and acknowledged the 
power of her commanding genius. In vain did Madame de Genlis 
ridicule her person and her works, and appeal to the praises of Buf- 
fon as the test of her own superiority ; it was felt, almost by intuition, 
that no comparison could exist between these two women, divided 
as they were by the wide boundary which distinguishes genius from 
talent. 

Only one woman seemed likely to share the power of Madame de 
Stael, and she owed this apparent equality, not to her intellectual 
acquirements, though they were of no mean order, but to her beauty, 
position, and political principles. This lady was Sophie de Grouchy, 
Marchioness of Condorcet, born in 1765, a year before the daughter 
of Necker, and married, like her, in 1786. Madame de Condorcet 
was a woman of a daring and independent turn of mind, full of 
talent, and as exquisitely beautiful as Madame de Stael was elo- 
quent : and beauty had then, as it has ever, a deep and winning elo- 
quence of its own. Madame de Stael was painfully conscious of 
her personal deficiencies, and often declared that she would give half 
her genius to be as handsome as Madame de Simiane : a lady noted 
for the poverty of her intellect and the incomparable loveliness of her 
face and person. Notwithstanding her beauty, Madame de Condor- 
cet could not have struggled against the genius of Madame de Stael, 
had they been rivals ; but such was not the case. Their political 
principles, if not identical, had the same tendency towards freedom. 
Madame de Condorcet had derived from her husband all the philo- 
sophic and democratic principles which distinguished the disciple of 
Voltaire and the friend of Turgot. Like him, she was enthusiastic 
in the liberal cause, and favoured with all her power the progress of 
the rising revolution. She received the most ardent philosophers 
and politicians of the day ; and the conversations which were held at 
her house were noted for their grave and abstract nature. Condor- 
cet was a man of some scientific eminence; his wife shared all his 
tastes, and assisted him in the literary portion of his labours. Not- 
withstanding this similarity of feeling, they presented externally a 
very striking contrast. Condorcet, middle-aged, grave, and cold, 
concealed a burning enthusiasm beneath this calm aspect, and had 
been characterized by D'Alembert, who knew him well, as a volcano 



MADAME DE CONDORCET. 233 

covered with snow. Madame de Condorcet, on the contrary, young, 
beautiful, and excitable, abandoned herself without reserve to her 
political prejudices, and to every passion of the moment. The so- 
ciety which met at her house had all the characteristics of the times. 
On the eve of a. revolution, full of hope, energy, and daring thought, 
it cast away, with proud disdain, the elegant frivolousness which had 
distinguished it so long. Independence of opinion and manner, ar- 
dent discussions, and often fatal quarrels, had replaced the love 
intrigues and puerile amusements of a past which was never more 
to return. 

The extreme activity which pervaded society during the last days 
of monarchy proved very fatal to the court, and especially to Marie- 
Antoinette. Instead of conciliating the influential women of the day, 
she seemed determined to alienate them from her cause. She had 
conceived a sort of haughty dislike for Madame de Stael, — probably 
because she was the daughter of Necker, — and she displayed this 
feeling with all her customary imprudence. Madame de Stael, on 
the other hand, did not like the queen; she believed her to be a vain 
and frivolous woman, whose folly was ruining the State. No one. 
then foresaw the weight of misery beneath which Marie-Antoinette 
was to expiate her errors; and the Swedish ambassadress used, in 
her strictures, a degree of severity which, could she have seen 
through the gloomy future, she would have sorrowfully forsworn. 
Personal motives, and a distrust of the queen's policy, which was 
then felt by the whole nation, thus united Madame de Coigny, Ma- 
dame de Genlis, Ma t dame de Condorcet, Madame Necker, and Ma- 
dame de Stael, the five most influential women of the day, in a 
powerful political opposition against the queen. Madame de Stael, 
passionately devoted, as she was, to her father, deeply resented the 
evident hostility with which he was regarded by Marie-Antoinette. 
On the day that he was recalled to office, Madame de Stael went to 
Versailles, and the same evening informed her friends, with some 
bitterness, that the queen had far more graciously received Madame 
de Canisy, the niece of the dismissed Archbishop of Sens, than the 
daughter of the recalled minister. It was impossible to know Marie- 
Antoinette, and not to feel such conduct to be intentional; and as 
impossible not to resent the slight, which, when she pleased, the 
haughty queen could so well convey with one disdainful glance. 

It was more than imprudence in Marie- Antoinette to act thus: it 
was pure folly. She could not but perceive that she had lost both 
the affection and the esteem of the nation. " The Austrian woman" 
was the gentlest epithet applied to her now. The Assembly of the 
Notables, convoked by Calonne, showed her that she had nothing to 
expect but reproach and insult from the first orders of the State. 
That these feelings were shared by the people, she could not doubt. 

20* K^ 



234 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Beyond the narrow circle of the Polignac coterie, she met everywhere 
with gloomy and estranged looks. When she walked in the gardens 
of Saint Cloud, the very children followed and insulted her. Allu- 
sions against her were eagerly seized in every theatre, and the lieu- 
tenant of police had to beg that she would no longer come to Paris, 
as he could not answer for the consequences of her presence. Every 
class seemed bent on ascribing to her the misery of the nation: the 
nobles calumniated her — the people called her Madame Deficit. 

Marie-Antoinette bore all in haughty silence ; but every insult, 
every proof of hatred she received, sank deeply in her heart. Her 
beauty, once so fresh and dazzling, gradually faded away ; her 
cheek became pale and thin ; her eyes grew dim with weeping, and 
with nights of anxious vigils. The sunny smile, which had lent so 
great a charm to her expressive countenance, visited it no more. If 
she saw not yet the terrible future, she was haunted with the shadow 
of dark, foreboding thoughts, and a secret .terror filled her heart 
whenever she asked herself what fate awaited her, her husband, and 
her children ? Through every fear and trial, she maintained, how- 
ever, a bearing more composed, and more truly royal, than that 
which had marked the days of her splendid prosperity. But, 
though she had the heroism which braves, Marie-Antoinette lacked 
the prudence which wards off evil. No suffering, no danger, could 
subdue her wilful nature. She struggled, even unto folly, against 
the tide of popular feeling; and her enemies read her features well 
when they said, that through all their traces of sorrow, they still 
bore the impress of unconquered pride. She waited her fate undis- 
mayed : alone against a nation. 



) 




PEEIOD THE FOUKTH. 



THE REVOLUTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Revolution and Marie-Antoinette. 

The convocation of the States-General — rendered imperative by 
the deplorable condition of the country — was, in itself, the herald of 
a revolution. Louis XVI. welcomed this important crisis with a 
feeling of relief, and fondly thought the burden of royalty over. 
Marie-Antoinette, more clear-sighted than her husband, and far more 
jealous than he was of the privileges and power of royal rank, 
learned, with an unusual degree of agitation, that the convocation 
was granted. On the evening of that eventful day, she was stand- 
ing in the recess of a window, with her face turned towards the 
gardens of Versailles. The chef de goblet had brought her a cup 
of coffee, which she sipped abstractedly ; her bearing was thought- 
ful and grave. She beckoned Madame Campan to approach, and 
observed to her : " Grand Dieu ! what a piece of news will be made 
public to-day ! The king grants the States-General." She raised 
her eyes to heaven with evident emotion, and continued dwelling 
on the subject. She seemed to consider this step as the forerunner 
of great calamities for monarchy and France, and bitterly exclaimed 
against the intrigues of the parliament and the nobility, which had 
reduced the king to this perilous course. 

But, deeply as she still resented the conduct of an aristocracy 
who had both insulted and calumniated her, the queen, nevertheless, 
sided with that body in their struggle against the people. If any- 
thing could increase her unpopularity, it was this. From the open- 
ing of the states, the name of " the Austrian woman" became identi- 
fied with falling despotism. To her hated power every obnoxious 
and oppressive measure was ascribed — often with justice — for gen- 
tleness and moderation in opposing her enemies ranked not amongst 
the qualities of Marie-Antoinette. 

On the 4th of May, 1789, the three orders proceeded with solemn 



236 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

pomp to the church of Notre Dame. The procession was magnifi- 
cent in the extreme. The nobles and the clergy were apparelled 
with all the splendour of old feudal dignity ; but the commoners, in 
their severe and simple costume, represented the reality of power. 
The queen was splendidly and royally attired for this occasion ; she 
was received with ominous silence : the only sounds that greeted 
her ears were cries of " Long live the Duke of Orleans." She felt 
so deeply affected by this premeditated insult, that she nearly fainted 
away. The thought of having thus betrayed her sensitiveness 
rankled more in her proud heart than the affront itself. The 
opening of the States was hailed with different feelings by the 
various classes of the nation ; hope was, however, the prevailing 
mood. The daughter of Necker, and the wife of the minister 
Montmorin, beheld together the procession from a gallery. Madame 
de Stael was full of hope and joy, but her companion checked her 
transports. " You are wrong," said she, " to rejoice ; this event 
forebodes much misery to France and to ourselves." The words 
were prophetic; the husband of Madame de Montmorin was massa- 
cred in the prisons, on the second of September ; she herself suffered 
on the scaffold with one of her sons ; another was drowned ; her 
eldest daughter perished in prison ; and the youngest, unable to 
survive such misfortunes, died of a broken heart ! 

With the States-General began that long revolutionary struggle 
which brought on the fall of monarchy ; but which did not end 
until, weary of her own excesses, France at last resigned herself to 
the despotism of Napoleon. In this contest, of which she became 
one of the most unhappy and illustrious victims, Marie-Antoinette 
took an active part, until the 10th of August, 1792. During those 
three years, the reckless disposition of the queen, and the over- 
whelming force of circumstances, made her seek the alliance of 
almost every party : at first, in the vain hope of checking the revo- 
lution, and when that was evidently impossible, for the desperate 
necessity of securing, at least, a temporary respite. Whenever she 
was personally exposed to danger, Marie-Antoinette showed herself 
the heroic and fearless daughter of Marie-Theresa ; but in her poli- 
tical conduct there was neither heroism nor greatness. She opposed 
the revolution vehemently and blindly, and without seeking to work 
the salvation of royalty through any settled plan of conduct. By 
mere unflinching resistance, she hoped to conquer a revolution, 
which the master genius of a Mirabeau afterwards vainly sought to 
subdue. When events, too significant to be misunderstood, showed 
her the powerlessness of her efforts, the queen had not the mag- 
nanimity to confess herself conquered, and to yield frankly to the 
revolution she could not control. Too haughty and noble-minded, 
however, to stoop to conciliate those whom she hated, she adopted 



VIOLENT OPPOSITION TO MARIE-ANTOINETTE. 237 

the policy that might have enabled her formerly to baffle court 
intrigues ; she bribed a few of her opponents, forgetting that her 
real enemy was the nation. She considered the revolution as the 
ambitious struggle of a few headlong men, when it was the awaken- 
ing of a long-oppressed people ; she sought to check, not to guide 
its course. The narrow-minded coterie who had urged her to the 
mistaken policy of resistance, soon abandoned her and Louis XVI. 
to their destiny; and, by their intrigues in foreign courts, exaspe- 
rated the whole nation against its sovereigns. 

Marie-Antoinette began her imprudent course by opposing Necker, 
then at the height of his power. The court party detested him, as 
the representative of liberal ideas and the favourite of the people. 
The people knew this well. When Necker was attacked, they felt 
against whom the blow was directed ; and they resented the insult 
by deeds of wild violence, which stained the pure cause of liberty. 
The coercive measures which the queen and her advisers induced 
the king to adopt, on the 23d of June, 1789, caused Necker to send 
in his resignation. On the 24th, a deputation from the nobility 
waited on the king, the princes, and the queen, in order to thank 
them for their support. Marie- Antoinette received them very gra- 
ciously, and showing them the dauphin, whom she held in her arms, 
told the deputies that she gave him to the nobility, and would teach 
him to consider that illustrious body as the firmest support of the 
throne. But so strong was the popular feeling against those ob- 
noxious measures, that, on the very same day, Marie-Antoinette was 
compelled to send for Necker, beseeching him to resume his office 
and allay the excitement ; she promised, at the same time, that his 
advice only should be followed in future. The queen soon broke 
her word. She was not insincere, but her inconstancy often made 
her appear such. Weakness produced a similar effect in her hus- 
band. Yielding to her advisers, she persuaded the king not to grant 
any further concessions to the popular party. One of her most par- 
tial historians* confesses that the troops which were gradually con- 
centrated around the Assembly, in order, no doubt, to intimidate it 
into compliance, were summoned there by the king, in pursuance 
with his wife's energetic representations. These measures were fol- 
lowed by the sudden dismissal of Necker on the 11th of July. With 
a strange mixture of weakness and audacity, the court party, though 
thus defying the nation by discarding its favourite minister, did not 
dare to commit this act openly. 

The king made Necker promise that he would leave France in- 
stantly, and without mentioning his departure to any one. Necker 
obeyed. He dined as usual with his family and his friends, and 

* Weber. 



238 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

talked with his customary cheerfulness : no one had the least sus- 
picion of the truth. After dinner he communicated the matter to 
his wife, stepped with her into his carriage, apparently in order to 
take his daily airing; but he soon bade the coachman alter his 
course, and, having procured a proper conveyance, left the kingdom 
with the utmost speed and secrecy. His departure was not known 
even to Madame de Stael until the following day. The continued 
pouring in of troops around Versailles, and the dismissal of Necker, 
created a profound sensation in Paris. The town was soon in a fer- 
ment ; conflicts with the soldiery took place; the whole people rose 
to arms ; the Bastille was stormed and compelled to surrender on the 
14th of July, and thus, three days after the attempted court reaction, 
a serious revolution had been accomplished. The king was com- 
pelled to yield to the tide of popular feeling: on the 15th, he pro- 
ceeded to the Assembly, made concessions, and was led back in 
triumph to his palace. In compliance with the wish of the crowd, 
he appeared on a balcony with his wife and children. Marie- 
Antoinette held the dauphin in her arms and embraced him, amid 
repeated cheers. A revolution, illegal in form and just in its object, 
which was the triumph of the majority over the will of the few, was 
thus sanctioned by royalty itself. But neither on the side of the 
court, nor on that of the people, was the reconciliation sincere. 
Threats against Marie-Antoinette and Madame de Polignac were 
uttered amidst the loud acclamations of the crowd, and the dema- 
gogue, Saint-Huruge, was heard menacing the throne under the 
windows of the royal palace. 

Marie- Antoinette knew well the danger of the crisis, and besought 
Madame de Polignac and her relatives to leave the kingdom. Thev 
immediately emigrated, with the princes of Conde and the Count of 
Artois. The departure of Madame de Polignac deeply affected the 
queen ; she forgot their political differences, and only felt that the 
woman she had once loved passionately, and to whom she still felt 
warmly attached, was leaving her, probably for ever. Their last 
interview was sad and affecting : with dark forebodings, and un- 
availing tears, they parted — to meet no more on earth. On sub- 
sequently learning the death of her royal mistress, the ex-favourite 
died of grief. So much was the name of Madame de Polignac de- 
tested, that she was compelled to leave France disguised as a fern me 
de chambre. On passing through the town of Sens, she was stopped 
with her friends by an excited crowd, who eagerly asked if France 
had yet got rid of the Polignacs. The travellers replied in the affir- 
mative, and were allowed to proceed. At Bale, Madame de Polignac 
met Necker, who was proceeding to Coppet. From the fugitive 
favourite, the exiled minister learned the storm his banishment had 
raised. They were still speaking of these strange events when 






NECKER RECALLED. 239 

Necker received two letters ; one from the monarch, and the other 
from the Assembly ; both recalling him to his post. He obeyed, and 
his return through France was one long scene of triumph. When 
he reached Paris, and presented himself at the Hotel de Ville, he 
was received with fervent enthusiasm. It was indeed, " one highest 
culminating day, with immortal vivats, with wife and daughter 
kneeling publicly to kiss his hand."* It is easy to imagine with 
what heartfelt pride Madame Necker and Madame de Stael thus 
publicly paid homage to the object of their common idolatry. Over- 
powered with joy at her father's triumph, Madame de Stael fainted 
away. 

Whilst the people and their minister thus triumphed, the court 
party was filled with dismay. On the 17th of July the king 
resolved to go to Paris, in order to allay the popular excitement. 
The queen, although a prey to the most gloomy apprehensions, 
restrained her tears as she saw him depart, and shut herself up 
with her family in her private apartments. She sent for some of 
the persons attached to her court; but, seized with a sudden terror, 
they had all fled from Versailles. A silenee, deep and ominous like 
that of death, now filled the deserted palace ; where, with straining 
ear and beating heart, Marie-xAntoinette awaited the arrival of the 
couriers, who every hour brought her news from her husband, 
and reported to her the events of his journey. So little did she 
hope for his return that, in case he should — as she fully expected — 
be detained, she had prepared an address for the National Assembly, 
throwing herself and her children on its protection, and beseeching, 
above all things, to be allowed to join the king. Her joy on his 
safe return from Paris was unbounded; but even in that moment of 
felicity wounded pride was blended with all her gladness. A cloud 
passed over her haughty brow, when she learned that Bailly, the 
new mayor of Paris, had remarked, in his address to Louis XVI., 
" Henry IV. conquered his people, and here are the people con- 
quering their king." "Conquering!" she repeated indignantly. 
Alas ! whilst thus contesting .the reality of popular power, was she 
not yielding to it herself? Was she not compelled to dismiss and 
send from the kingdom even her old frivolous Abbe de Vermond, 
lest the mere fact of having been in her favour should doom him to 
destruction ? 

The lesson which the taking of the Bastille might have inculcated 
was soon forgotten by Marie-Antoinette. Before three months had 
elapsed, she again attempted a reaction, which gave rise to the dis- 
graceful events of the 5th and 6th of October : disgraceful alike for 
the sovereign and the people. On the 23d of September the regi- 

* Carlyle. — French Revolution, vol. i. p. 321. 



240 WOMAN IN FBANCE. 

merit of Flanders arrived at Versailles, and gave a splendid dinner 
to the gardes du corps on the 1st of October. The king granted 
them the hall of the opera for the occasion. The queen had been 
urged to appear and honour the guests with her presence; but she 
prudently declined. This judicious resolve was overruled by one of 
the courtiers. Towards the close of the repast, when the heads of 
the revellers were heated with wine, the queen, the king, and their 
children appeared in the scene of festivity. Their presence excited 
the greatest transports. " Richard 6 mon Roi" was enthusiastically 
sung, and the health of the royal visiters drunk amidst deafening 
cheers. The usual toast to the nation was intentionally omitted, 
the tricolour cockade was trampled under foot, and the white 
cockade, the badge of loyalty, triumphantly displayed. When 
intelligence of this banquet, of the insults to the revolutionary prin- 
ciples by which it had been accompanied, and of the sanction these 
circumstances had received from the royal presence, reached Paris, 
the news created a feeling of deep, indignant resentment. As though 
determined to make matters still worse, the court party persisted in 
their folly. A breakfast, consisting of the fragments left from the 
dinner, was given on the 2d of October : the same defiant spirit was 
displayed by the guests, whilst all the court ladies busied themselves 
in sewing white cockades, which they distributed to the imprudent 
partisans of absolute royalty. This was a time of great scarcity, 
almost of famine, in Paris. The rich banquet given by the regi- 
ment of Flanders, the imprudent menaces of quelling the revolution 
uttered by the officers, the contrast the supposed abundance and 
profusion of Versailles offered to the misery of the capital, produced 
deep irritation ; and, on the 5th of October, an insurrection of 
women took place. It has been asserted that this insurrection was 
premeditated : that the Orleans faction had directed it against the 
queen's life, in order to obviate the inconvenience of her regency, 
in case the king should be deposed ; but there is every reason to 
believe that the movement was wholly spontaneous. 

On the morning of the 5th of October, a large body of women, 
consisting chiefly of the refuse of the populace, seized on the Hotel 
de Ville. Headed by the usher Maillard and Theroigne de Meri- 
eourt, they proceeded to Versailles. Theroigne was a beautiful 
courtesan, who acted a conspicuous part in every insurrectionary 
movement of those times. She was a native of Mericourt, near 
Liege ; her parents were farmers in easy circumstances, and gave 
her a good education. She was only seventeen when a nobleman 
of the neighbourhood seduced and soon abandoned her. She fled 
to England, then came to Paris, saw Mirabeau, Sieyes, Brissot, 
Des Moulins, and Romme, and plunged into an agitated and dissi- 
pated life. From the first she espoused, with passionate ardour, the 



THEROIGNE DE MERICOURT. 241 

extreme revolutionary principles. Dressed in a red riding-habit, 
with dark flowing locks beneath a hat and plume, a sabre by her 
side, and two pistols in her belt, she headed every popular tumult. 
Her eloquence, bravery, and recklessness fitted her for the part she 
had chosen. At the storming of the Bastille she appeared first on 
the tower of the fortress ; and the conquerors, struck with her cou- 
rage, decreed her a sabre of honour on the breach. She now 
placed herself foremost amongst the women on the 5th of October. 
The band, amounting to several thousand, proceeded to Versailles, 
apparently without any fixed object. They insisted on seeing the 
king, and seized tumultously on the hall of the Assembly; but, 
although they manifested a very riotous disposition, they were kept 
in tolerable order. Their threats against the queen excited, how- 
ever, the alarm of Louis for her safety, and he earnestly urged her 
to depart with her children ; but her spirit was of that order which 
rises with the storm : she firmly refused to abandon her husband. 
" I know," said she, " that it is my life they seek ; but I am the 
daughter of Marie-Theresa, and I have learned not to fear death." 

On the morning of the 6th, a body of men and poissardes pro- 
ceeded to the badly-guarded palace. A conflict between them and 
the gardes du corps immediately began. With the instinct of ha- 
tred the infuriated populace rushed towards the apartment of the 
queen : she had retired to rest at a late hour, ordering her attendants 
to do the same. They, fortunately, disobeyed, and remained with 
their own women seated near her bed-room door. " About half-past 
four in the morning," relates Madame Campan, " they heard horri- 
ble yells and discharges of fire-arms. One ran in to the queen to 
awaken her, and get her out of bed. My sister flew to the place 
from which the tumult seemed to proceed ; she opened the door ol 
the ante-chamber which leads to the great guard-room, and beheld 
one of the body-guards holding his musket across the door, and 
attacked by a mob, who were striking at him ; his face was covered 
with blood. He turned round and exclaimed, ' Save the queen, 
madam : they are come to assassinate her !' " She hastily shut the 
door upon the unfortunate victim of duty, fastened it with the great 
bolt, and took the same precaution on leaving the next room. On 
reaching the queen's chamber, she cried out to her, " Get up, 
madam ! do not stay to dress yourself: fly to the king's apart- 
ment." Marie-Antoinette rose in haste, and did not escape without 
difficulty. 

When La Fayette had succeeded in clearing the palace, all peril 
was not over for the queen. She sat near a window talking to M. 
de la Luzerne, one of the ministers, when a ball from below, intended 
for her, struck the wall close to her. M. de la Luzerne, without 
seeming to heed this fact, rose, and continuing his discourse, placed 

21 



242 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

himself quietly between the queen and the window. " Nay, sir," 
said she, with dignified calmness, and signing him to resume his 
seat, "this is not your place, it is mine." During the whole of that 
dreadful day she displayed the same lofty heroism. On the first 
sounds of the conflict, Necker, closely followed by his wife and 
daughter, hastened to the palace. The people, in the courts below, 
were asking vehemently that the royal family should return with 
them to Paris. The king promised to comply, and shots were fired 
in token of rejoicing. It was at this moment that the queen appeared 
in the great saloon. Her fair and luxuriant hair fell in disorder 
around her pale countenance; but never had her whole aspect borne 
the impress of such commanding majesty. " Everything in her 
person struck the imagination," observes Madame de Stael. The 
people asked, with loud shouts, that the queen should appear on the 
balcony as well as the king. 

The expressive countenance of Marie-Antoinette betrayed what 
fate she dreaded ; but she unhesitatingly advanced towards the bal- 
cony, between her two children. The ominous cry of " no children" 
arose below her from the vast marble court, then full of armed men. 
She understood those fatal words, and gently pushing back the 
children into the apartment, returned to the balcony, unprotected 
and alone. " Should I die, I will do it !" had energetically exclaimed 
this daughter of Marie-Theresa ; and with hands folded on her bosom, 
and eyes raised to heaven, she now stood there awaiting her fate, in 
heroic and sublime resignation. But her hour w 7 as not come : years 
of sorrow were before her still ; and a doom far more sad, far more 
bitter than the assassin could inflict, awaited the hapless queen. 
One man pointed his gun towards her, but another of his com- 
panions struck it down : the calm heroism of the woman subdued the 
anger felt by the crowd against the imprudent queen ; and when La 
Fayette stepped forward and respectfully raised her hand to his lips, 
the justice of the homage was acknowledged by a loud cry of" Vive 
la Reine." 

When Marie-Antoinette left the balcony and re-entered the sa- 
loon, she approached Madame Necker, and said to her, in a voice 
rendered inaudible by convulsive sobs, " They are going to compel 
me and the king to return to Paris, with the heads of our gardes du 
corps carried on their pikes before us." Two of the gardes du corps 
had indeed been murdered, and their heads were borne in triumph to 
Paris by the poissardes ; but fortunately not within sight of the un- 
happy sovereigns. Before leaving the royal palace of Versailles for 
ever, the queen observed with much emotion, to one of her attendants, 
" We are lost : dragged away, perhaps to death : when kings be- 
come prisoners, they have not long to live." The journey from 
Versailles to Paris lasted five hours ; a promiscuous mob of men 



# 

CHANGE IN FRENCH SOCIETY. 243 

and women accompanied the royal carriage ; they shouted, sang, 
carried loaves of bread on their pikes, and exclaimed, in allusion to 
the king, queen, and dauphin, " We are bringing the baker, his wife, 
and the little apprentice." Notwithstanding the fatigue and suffer- 
ings of that eventful day, the self-possession of Marie-Antoinette did 
not desert her. The king, on arriving at the Hotel de Ville, said to 
the Mayor Bailly, " that he always came with pleasure to his good 
city of Paris." " And with confidence," quickly added the queen. 
They proceeded to the Tuileries, which had not been inhabited for 
nearly a century, and was in a most dilapidated condition. When, 
on the following day, Marie-Antoinette received her court and the 
corps diplomatique in those dismal and antiquated apartments, she 
could hardly speak for her tears. Those whom she addressed were 
scarcely less moved. She apologized for being obliged to receive 
her guests in the room where her children had spent the night. 
" You know," said she, " that \ did not expect to come here." And 
as she spoke thus, her fine and irritated countenance was such as 
when once seen could not easily be forgotten.* 

Her beautiful and gentle sister-in-law, Madame Elizabeth, bore 
this change with a more serene resignation. Although this charm- 
ing princess was not, it is said, of a naturally amiable disposition, 
her deep and sincere piety had so completely eradicated her early 
defects, and imparted to her whole being something so holy and so 
pure, that, notwithstanding her youth and loveliness, the chief feel- 
ing which she inspired was veneration. Indifferent to her own fate, 
she was evidently not so with regard to the fate of her brother, 
whom she loved passionately, and of his wife and children. But 
her anxiety for them was tempered by religious submission : less 
heroic than the queen, she was not less noble or devoted. 

Whilst monarchy was thus rapidly approaching its last perilous 
crisis, French society was likewise undergoing a marked transfor- 
mation. Ever since the opening of the States-General, politics had 
absorbed every conversation. When the greatest social questions 
were at stake, what interest could be felt in the literary discus- 
sions of narrow coteries? The hall of the National Assembly had 
become the wide arena where the struggle for power and popu- 
larity was now carried on. Women thronged the galleries, as spec- 
tators of this great contest, and watched with deep interest the last 
throes of that expiring society with which their old power was fast 
passing away. But when, after the 6th of October, the assembly 
was transferred to Paris, the beautiful and high-born ladies, who 
had looked down from the tribunes on the stirring scene below, 
gradually vanished, and were replaced by ferocious and hideous 

* Madame de Stael. 



244 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

poissardes ; who, from always bringing their knitting with them, 
acquired the name of tricotteuses. The dawn of the revolution and 
the taking of the Bastille had, however, been hailed with rapturous 
enthusiasm by the elite of French society. When the old fortress 
fell, its ruins offered a strange and varied aspect; tents and cafes 
arose, as by enchantment, amongst the wrecks of towers and bas- 
tions ; fashionable women came in their carriages to visit that 
once gloomy and silent spot, now as gay and crowded as Long 
Champs. Here the still lively and brilliant Madame de Genlis 
brought her princely pupils, to read them moral lessons over fallen 
despotism : as a proof of her entire sympathy with the popular 
cause, she afterwards wore suspended around her neck a miniature 
Bastille, made of real bastille sandstone. Madame de Stael, Mira- 
beau, the young Chateaubriand, then wholly unknown, likewise 
visited the last ruins of feudalism. Statesmen, actors, poets, artists, 
and men and women of the world, thronged together to the place, 
amidst the din and laughter of the workmen, who joyously demo- 
lished the vast edifice. A ball was afterwards given on the spot 
where the once-dreaded fortress had stood. - 

But, notwithstanding the sympathy which they manifested for 
the spirit of the revolution, at least in its early stages, the women 
of those times exercised a very slight degree of influence in com- 
parison with the power they had formerly possessed. 

For some time Madame de Genlis still drew around her a portion 
of the most elegant society of the times. Every Sunday she re- 
ceived a political and literary coterie in the apartments she occupied 
with her pupils at Bellechasse; but, as the revolution progressed, 
her circle gradually became narrower. Those persons who did not 
wish to attach themselves to the Orleans faction, dreaded her tact 
and insinuation, and avoided frequenting her saloon. Many affected 
to be repelled by her reputation for intrigue, and her enemies — who 
were numerous among the royalists — industriously circulated re- 
ports most injurious to her reputation. These reports were coun- 
tenanced by the suspicions which the Duchess of Orleans had at 
length expressed with regard to the connexion between her hus- 
band and the governess of her sons. The duchess also complained 
that the affections of her children were estranged from her by 
Madame de Genlis, whom she accordingly wished to resign her 
functions. Both the duke and the governess refused to accede to 
this; the duchess was loud in her complaints, and the public, who 
esteemed her virtues, and pitied her for being united to a profligate 
husband, threw all the odium on Madame de Genlis. 

The power of Madame de Stael and Madame de Condorcet was 
likewise declining. The partisans of constitutional monarchy rallied 
for a while around the gifted daughter of Necker, but her sway was 



9 

DECLINE OF FEMALE POWER. 245 

as brief as that of the principles she professed. Madame de Con- 
dorcet belonged to the republican party, and received men of demo- 
cratic opinions; but, although she was visited by the notorious 
Anacharsis Clootz (who called himself the "Orator of the Human 
Race"), and was styled by him, in compliment to her great charms, 
"the Lycean Venus," she did not exercise a wide or lasting power. 
When her husband fell with the Girondists, she sank into total 
obscurity, notwithstanding her talents and beauty. Though many 
women figured in the Revolution, there are in reality but three who 
can be said to have acted in it a really important part, and whose 
names are imperishably linked with the history of their times. These 
three women are, the Queen, whose long and unavailing struggle for 
monarchy brought her to the scaffold; the republican Madame Ro- 
land, who perished with the Girondists; and the noble-minded Ma- 
dame Tallien, who hastened the fall of Robespierre, and avenged so 
many pure and illustrious victims. The time for speaking of Madame 
Roland or Madame Tallien is not yet come, and we must now return 
to Marie-Antoinette. If, in her political conduct, there will be, as 
usual, much inconsistency and imprudence to deplore, yet shall we 
ever find her sublime and heroic in the hour of danger. 



CHAPTER II. 

Marie-Antoinette and the fall of the Monarchy. 

The principal errors and misfortunes of Marie-Antoinette may be 
attributed to the extreme difficulties of her position. As a woman, 
she could exercise only an occult power, peculiarly unsuitable to 
her open nature. Impetuous and energetic, she was fit for instanta- 
neous action, but ill adapted for giving the calm counsel on which 
another could act. The hesitating and apathetic temper of her hus- 
band would alone have sufficed to counteract whatever good she 
might have effected. Louis XVI. only knew how to suffer passively. 
Marie-Antoinette early saw this, and, in spite of the respectful re- 
serve with which she always alluded to the king, it was easy to 
perceive that a feeling akin to bitterness rankled in her mind when 
she thought on the fetters of her position. Could she have acted 
freely and alone, the Revolution would have been sooner over : she 
could not have saved monarchy or the monarch, but their fall, not 
being delayed so long, would not have been so overwhelming and 
so deep. But this very energy of Marie-Antoinette — which, had 

21* 



246 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

she been independent, would have hastened the crisis — prolonged it, 
because she was not free, and gave it the dangerous aspect of a 
struggle. When she had exhausted every form of opposition, she 
perceived too late that resignation might have beeen the wisest 
course. There is regret for past imprudence in those words which 
she addressed, shortly before the 10th of August, 1792, to one of 
her confidants : " As for myself," said she, after alluding to the 
passive temper of the king, " I could do anything, and appear on 
horseback were it needed ; but that would be furnishing weapons to 
the king's enemies : throughout all France a cry against the Austrian 
and the rule of a woman would be raised instantly. By coming 
forward, I should, moreover, reduce the king to a humiliating and 
inferior position. A queen," she added mournfully, "who, like me, 
is nothing in her own right — who is not even regent — has but one 
part to act, — to await the event silently, and prepare to die." 

During the three years which elapsed from the events of the 
month of October, 1789, to the fall of monarchy in August, 1792, 
Marie- Antoinette had acted in direct opposition to the principle of 
passive submission. The outrages to which she was subjected, from 
the moment that the Tuileries became the residence of the royal 
family, embittered her against the Revolution and its partisans. 
Shortly after the events of October, she visited, with the king, a 
large manufactory in the faubourg St. Antoine. They were received 
with much enthusiasm. " See, madam !" observed La Fayette, who 
accompanied the royal couple, " how good this people are, when 
one comes to meet them." " But are they so, when they come to 
meet us?" bitterly asked Marie- Antoinette. The queen was re- 
sentful ; but she disdained vengeance. A prosecution was instituted 
by the Chatelet against the instigators of the insurrection of the 5th 
of October, and a deputation waited on the queen, in order to hear 
from her lips an account of what she had personally seen and suf- 
fered. In answer to their inquiries, she replied: " I will never in- 
form against any of my subjects. I saw all ; I knew all ; and I 
have forgotten all." 

The instinctive policy of Marie- Antoinette seems to have been to 
save the royal power alone. She stood in equal dread of the revo- 
lutionists and the emigrants. To yield to the former was ruin ; to 
accept the aid of the latter was degradation. She recoiled with dis- 
trust from either course, until events became too imperious to allow 
her to persevere in her aim at solitary influence. We, accordingly, 
find her alternately holding conferences with Mirabeau, Barnave, 
and even Danton ; or placing in foreign intervention her only re- 
maining hope of safety. Her characteristic and interesting con- 
nexion with Mirabeau began in the month of May of 1790. It 
would have commenced much earlier, but for the scruples of the 



INTERVIEW WITH MIRAEEAU. 247 

king ; who objected to form even a private alliance with a man so 
notorious for his immorality. Marie-Antoinette, more clear-sighted 
and less rigidly scrupulous than her husband, at length overcame 
his objections. 

The first interview of the queen and the great orator had all the 
mystery of romance. One evening, in the month of May, Mirabeau 
left Paris, apparently for the purpose of riding to the country-house 
of his friend Claviere ; but he soon turned towards Saint Cloud, en- 
tered the park by a private entrance, and found the queen waiting 
for him, alone, in a shady and retired spot. "With a foe of ordinary 
capacity," said she, "with an every-day enemy, I should now be 
guilty of a very foolish, a very injudicious step : but with a Mira- 
beau 1 " The grace, dignity, and energy of the queen produced 

a powerful impression on Mirabeau. With a woman's ready tact 
she noticed this, and also observed to Madame Campan that the ex- 
pression of "a Mirabeau" which she employed intentionally, had not 
failed in its desired object. The close of their interview alone is 
known. "Madame," then exclaimed Mirabeau, "whenever your 
illustrious mother, Maria-Theresa, honoured one of her loyal sub- 
jects with an interview, she never suffered them to depart without 
according to them her royal hand." The queen, with a queen's 
grace, held forth her hand ; Mirabeau, with a king's dignified ele- 
gance, knelt and fervently kissed it : that kiss shot strength through 
his frame, and, starting to his feet, he cried, with native self-con- 
fidence, — 

"Madame, the monarchy is saved !"* 

This meeting gave Mirabeau a high opinion of the queen. He 
emphatically observed to Dumont : " She is the only man of the 
family !" — an expression which Napoleon afterwards borrowed, and 
applied to Marie-Antoinette's daughter, the Duchess of Angouleme. 
Mirabeau also perceived, that to act on the king it was necessary to 
influence his wife, since she alone could rouse him to action. It 
was, therefore, to Marie-Antoinette that he addressed his advice and 
correspondence, and gave detailed explanations of his plans for the 
restoration of monarchical power. That he even intended her to act 
a conspicuous part in carrying out his projects, is apparent by a 
phrase which occurs in one of his letters: "The moment may come 
when it will be necessary to see, that which we may see, on horse- 
back, a woman and a child: these are family traditions, familiar to 
the queen." The noble nature of her new ally strongly attracted 
Marie- Antoinette; but she had scarcely sufficient firmness of purpose 
to adhere to his plans. She consulted Mirabeau, as she consulted 

* ■ Mirabeau:" A Life History, p. 221, vol. ii. 



248 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

so many others, in the vain hope of deriving the desired benefit from 
their advice, without binding herself to follow it implicitly. 

A year after the commencement of their intercourse, Mirabeau 
died, and whatever hopes the queen might have founded on his aid, 
perished with him. He died, happily for his fame, at the precise 
time when his powerlessness to allay the storm he had helped to 
raise, would have been felt ; but, though his life could not have stayed 
the revolutionary torrent, his death contributed to accelerate its course. 
From that moment the position of the royal family became daily more 
precarious. The king, with his habitual indecision, knew not which 
party to favour. More fearless and energetic, Marie- Antoinette 
held all concessions weakness, and hated disguise with all the force 
of a frank nature. To smile on those she disliked, and not to dare 
to favour those she loved, was a moral thraldom she could not 
endure. She longed to break her chains ; to conquer back that 
royal sceptre, which had escaped from her husband's feeble hand ; 
and to subdue that stern revolution, which had begun with insult- 
ing her name and threatening her life. The dangers which sur- 
rounded her husband, her children, and herself, strengthened her 
resolve. She was in constant expectation of seeing her apartments 
invaded by the populace. A sound of musketry, which appeared 
to come from the palace itself, one night roused Louis XVI. from 
his slumber. He hastened to the queen's apartment; it was vacant: 
he proceeded farther, and found his wife by the Dauphin's bed, 
clasping the child in her arms. " I was at my post," she calmly 
observed, in reply to his inquiries. The alarm proved to be false : 
but such was the state of anxiety in which Marie-Antoinette lived. 
The royal family at length resolved upon flight : a fatal and impru- 
dent step. 

Marie- Antoinette entrusted the conduct of this important enterprise 
to the Count of Fersen, a young and chivalrous Swede, who had 
conceived a romantic passion for the beautiful captive queen. His 
sovereign, GustavusIIL, had already proclaimed himself her knight, 
and vowed to defend her ; the Count of Fersen endeavoured to save, 
at least, the life of the woman he loved. His measures were at first 
attended with great success. On the night of the 20th of June, 1791, 
the members of the royal family, all carefully disguised, left the 
palace by different issues. Their flight was not discovered until the 
next morning. Favoured by this advance, the fugitives might have 
reached their place of destination in safety, if they had not been re- 
cognised by Drouet, the son of a postmaster, who caused them to be 
intercepted at Varennes. In spite of their protestations, they were 
compelled to alight at the house of the syndic, a grocer named Sausse. 
It was night; but the positive assertions of Drouet, and the charac- 



FALL OF THE MONARCHY. 249 

teristic features of both the sovereigns, betrayed them. Louis XVI. 
still persisting in denial, was rudely contradicted by the men around : 
with that strong sense of dignity which never deserted her, Marie- 
Antoinette, seeing that all was over, stepped forward, and addressing 
Sausse and his companions, authoritatively observed : " Since you 
acknowledge him for your sovereign, treat him as such." Her look 
and tone silenced these men. Louis, casting aside all disguise, con- 
fessed his rank, and begged not to be detained ; representing the 
evils that would accrue to the country from that detention. But it 
was in vain that the king pleaded and commanded by turns ; in vain 
that the queen, now haughty no longer, weepingly begged of Madame 
Sausse to remember her feelings as a wife and a mother, and inter- 
cede with her husband. Tears and entreaties proved useless, and 
the royal family retired to a narrow room above the shop to spend 
the night : but not to rest. In that night the fair hair of Marie-An- 
toinette turned white with grief. 

It was a melancholy journey for the fugitives from Varennes to 
Paris. The shouts and execrations of the people accompanied them 
all the way. An old nobleman having approached the royal carriage, 
and expressed his sympathy for those within it, was murdered before 
their eyes. A priest would have shared the same fate, but for the 
interference of Barnave, one of the two deputies sent by the National 
Assembly to protect the king. Young, eloquent, and popular, Bar- 
nave had figured, since the opening of the States, as the rival of 
Mirabeau, and the vehement opponent of the court. Pethion, who 
shared his present mission, was likewise a member of the left, and a 
republican ; as he informed the king he was bringing home a cap- 
tive. The two deputies sat in the same carriage with the royal 
family. Pethion behaved with rude insolence; Barnave with un- 
feigned sympathy and respect: he gazed with surprise on the woman 
he had judged from the reports of her calumniators ; he saw her 
beautiful and dignified in her queenly sorrow, and, with the enthu- 
siasm of a generous heart, he secretly vowed to protect and defend 
her. There is not, perhaps, a circumstance more honourable to 
Marie-Antoinette than the passionate admiration which, without 
effort, she inspired in men of every rank and party, whenever they 
could approach her. Her power was gone ; tears and suffering had 
faded her once dazzling loveliness : the devotedness she excited was 
not paid to the woman or to the queen ; it was the instinctive tribute 
which a fine and generous nature must always call forth. During 
the whole of the journey homewards, she behaved with a courage 
and self-possession which increased the admiration of Barnave. She 
calmly alighted at the Tuileries, regardless of the hootings of the 
populace ; and, unconquered even in that hour, haughtily refused 



250 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

the offered protection of the Viscount de Noailles, one of the mem- 
bers of the aristocracy who sided with the people. 

The unsuccessful flight to Varennes greatly aggravated the posi- 
tion of the royal family. They were so closely watched, that it was 
only by stealth the queen could see her husband. National guards 
remained in her room, even at night, and she protested in vain against 
this gross indecency. Notwithstanding this close surveillance, she 
found means to communicate with Barnave. Alone, in an obscure 
room of the palace, she often waited whole hours for the young de- 
puty, with her hand on the lock of the door. The sincerity of Bar- 
nave's devotedness had deeply touched Marie-Antoinette. She sym- 
pathized with his youth, his talent, and even with the ambition which 
had proved so fatal to her. Whilst she declared, " that she could 
never forgive the nobles who had commenced the revolution, she 
excused the young commoner for having ardently embraced a cause 
which opened a path to his legitimate ambition." The king and 
Madame Elizabeth shared those feelings. The queen did not, how- 
ever, adopt the plans of Barnave. He proposed constitutional pru- ■ 
dence and moderation ; but for this, Marie-Antoinette instinctively 
and justly felt that it was now too late. Had this plan been adopted 
earlier, with all sincerity and truth, the Revolution might, perhaps, 
have been checked, and the constitution firmly established. We say 
perhaps ; for on examination, it is difficult to avoid perceiving that 
the Revolution was merely a political struggle for freedom and rights 
long denied : it was a social war of the suffering and exasperated 
masses against their former oppressors. A constitution which 
fettered them with a king, and checked the progress of the Revolu- 
tion, was therefore as little acceptable to an immense number of in- 
dividuals, as it was distasteful to the sovereigns themselves. The 
party of the constitutionalists and the moderates was, however, large 
and powerful ; and it might have held back the democratic element, 
but for the violence of the royalists, the constant hesitation of Louis 
XVI., and the reactionary tendencies of the queen. Owing to these 
auxiliaries, the nation lost all faith in the efficacy of constitutional 
monarchy, and was ripe for a republic by the time the constitution 
was finished. 

The queen was, therefore, both more practical and more clear- 
sighted than Barnave, when she rejected as useless his plan of ad- 
hering faithfully to the constitution; but she erred in thinking a 
reaction possible. After sacrificing his popularity to the royal cause, 
Barnave had the mortification to perceive that the sacrifice had been 
made in vain, and that the queen now relied exclusively on the aid 
of emigrants and foreigners. Marie- Antoinette reluctantly adopted 
this course. She had never loved the aristocracy, and she well 
knew the degree of favour and submission they would expect, if 



GENEROUS CONDUCT OF MADAME DU BARRY. 251 

they succeeded in quelling the Revolution. A few months after the 
dissolution of the National Assembly, Barnave left Paris, and parted 
from the queen. She assured him that, in the event of a reaction, 
he should still possess her friendship and esteem. Barnave mourn- 
fully pointed out the fallacy of her hopes ; told her he knew that he 
had risked his head in her cause, and risked it in vain ; but enthu- 
siastically added, that, so far from repenting aught he had done, he 
should hold himself fully repaid if she would only grant him the 
honour of pressing to his lips her royal hand. The queen, with 
much emotion, extended her hand towards him: he seized and kissed 
it fervently. Thus they parted, to meet no more ; but to perish 
within a lew days of one another, the queen and the commoner, on 
the same scaffold. 

The hopes of Marie-Antoinette did not rest solely with the emigrants: 
she believed that the excess of the anarchy she foresaw would lead 
to the re-establishment of order. It was so; but not until she, and 
all those she loved, had fallen victims to the popular anger so impru- 
dently encouraged. In the month of November of the year 1791, 
the year of the flight to Varennes, La Fayette and Pethion contended 
for the mayorship of Paris. The former was a constitutionalist, the 
latter a republican. Marie-Antoinette disliked La Fayette, as being 
one of the first men who had humbled monarchy. She accordingly 
opposed his election, and spent large sums to secure that of his rival. 
It was perhaps to her efforts that Pethion owed his return. 

This conduct was extremely imprudent ; for since the acceptation 
of the Constitution by the king, the difficulties of his position had 
materially increased. Friends and enemies seemed leagued alike 
against the peace of their sovereigns. Friends complained that their 
advice had not been followed ; court ladies threw up their places in 
the royal household with disgust, because privileges were abolished 
by the new constitution, and duchesses were deprived of their tradi- 
tionary stool or tabouret. Marie-Antoinette was hurt with this con- 
duct, and contrasted it probably with the behaviour of Madame du 
Barry. From the commencement of the Revolution the ex-mistress 
of Louis XV. distinguished herself by her zeal in favour of the 
queen ; at whose court she knew, however, that she could never 
hope to appear. At one period, hearing that the queen was in want 
of money, she offered her the costly and magnificent diamonds she 
had received from the late king. The queen thanked her and de- 
clined. After the events of the 6th of October, Madame du Barry, 
at the risk of her life, received the wounded gardes du corps who 
had defended the apartment of Marie-x\ntoinette, and attended them 
with the utmost devotedness. More affected by this trait than if she 
had received a personal favour from her former antagonist, Marie- 



252 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Antoinette commissioned one of her friends to go and thank Madame 
du Barry in her name. 

Fortunately for the honour of the French female noblesse, Madame 
du Barry was not the only titled lady who braved real peril in the 
cause of royalty. The beautiful Princess of Lamballe no sooner 
learned that the queen was surrounded with danger, than, leaving 
her safe asylum in England, she returned to France, and claimed 
her post of superintendent of the queen's household. Not long before 
the 10th of August, she observed to one of her friends: "As the 
peril grows greater, so do I feel more strength. I am ready 
to die; I fear nothing." Other women emulated her devoted ness ; 
but those were solitary instances : and the intrigues of the narrow- 
minded coteries who still gathered around Marie-Antoinette, might 
well, when joined to the cabals of her enemies, justify the passionate 
exclamation she addressed to her brother: "Is it fated then, that I, 
with the blood I am come of, with the sentiments I have, must live 
and die among such beings ?" 

With the Legislative Assembly, which succeeded to the Constitu- 
ent, arose a new and powerful party, destined" to hasten the course 
of the Revolution, and to perish amongst its earliest victims. This 
party (that of the Girondists) yielded to the influence of several re- 
markable women. Whilst its leading members still affected consti- 
tutional principles, they submitted to the power of Madame de Stael 
and Madame de Condorcet. These two ladies succeeded in procuring 
the appointment of the Count of Narbonne as War Minister. He 
was a young, handsome, and brilliant nobleman, and a passionate 
attachment was said to be at the root of the interest testified for him 
by the daughter of Xecker and the wife of Condorcet. But gradually, 
and as their policy assumed a more republican shape, the Girondists 
fell off from Madame de Stael, who still remained faithful to her fathers 
doctrines of constitutional monarchy. A Madame d'Udon, now well 
nigh forgotten, and a clever actress, named Mademoiselle Caudeille, 
attracted them for a time ; their power was quickly effaced by that 
of Madame Roland, a woman whose name is imperishably connected 
with the history of the Girondist party. It was this woman whom 
General Dumouriez endeavoured to fascinate, when he succeeded 
Narbonne, in March, 1792. He saw her power over her friends, 
and wished to rule them through her. But if Madame Roland was 
graceful and lovely as a French woman of the eighteenth century, 
she was also as austere as a Roman matron. Dumouriez, unprinci- 
pled and accustomed to the intrigues of the old regime, smiled at the 
earnestness of her republican enthusiasm : leaving her to her bright 
visions of the future, he secretly resolved to turn his attention to the 
more practicable object of saving monarchy and the queenly Marie- 
Antoinette. Could he do this, he knew his fortunes would be secure 



CHIVALROUS CONDUCT OF DUMOURIEZ. 253 

for ever ; and, though ambitious, the daring and brilliant Dumouriez 
was also capable of devoted and chivalrous feelings : the task of 
delivering from the toils of her enemies a proud and oppressed queen, 
was as soothing to his vanity as the long vista of honours its accom- 
plishment would open to his soaring spirit. 

His first care on his appointment was, therefore, to seek an inter- 
view with Marie- Antoinette. He found her alone, pacing her apart- 
ment agitatedly. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked irritated. 
She was probably so at the appointment of Dumouriez, who had the 
reputation of being a vehement Jacobin. " Sir," said she, walking 
up towards him, " you are now all powerful ; but popularity is brief. 
I will deal frankly with you. Neither the king nor myself submit 
willingly to the constitutional innovations which have been forced 
upon us. Choose now the part you wish to take." To this strange 
and imprudent speech, Dumouriez replied by pointing out the ne- 
cessity of appearing to adopt the extreme principles it was so desi- 
rable to control : such, he hinted, had already been his policy. But 
Marie-Antoinette either disliked this course or mistrusted the general, 
and she received his advances coldly. Not discouraged by this re- 
pulse, Dumouriez, whose interest in the fate of the courageous queen 
was increased by her daring and imprudent temper, continued to 
urge the point ; and, falling at her feet, passionately exclaimed, as 
he pressed her hand to his lips, — " Oh ! madame, allow yourself to 
be saved." Marie-Antoinette, thinking he acted a part, remained 
inflexible. She certainly erred in not giving the plans of Dumouriez 
a fair trial. Of all the members of the Girondist ministry, he was 
the only one who did not aim at a republic : the only one really de- 
voted to the king. 

The unhappy monarch daily found, in his advisers, enemies ready 
to watch and expose his errors. He unfortunately gave them a 
pretence for opposition, by refusing to sanction the decree against 
the non-juring priests. The ministers remonstrated ; he dismissed 
them, but could not find men fit to succeed them : the sense of his 
helpless and desperate position then struck him so forcibly that for 
ten days he scarcely uttered a word. The queen, filled with grief 
at his deplorable state, threw herself at his feet, and conjured him, 
in her name and that of her children, to arouse himself. " If perish 
we must," she energetically exclaimed, "let us perish with honour, 
striving for our cause ; and let us not remain to be stifled in the walls 
of our palace." 

The organized insurrection of the 20th of June, 1792, which 
followed the dismissal of the Girondist ministry, seemed destined to 
humble and degrade royalty before it should be crushed for ever. 
An infuriated populace broke into the palace, insulted the royal 
family, and committed every violence short of assassination. Louis 

22 



254 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

XVI. rose into sublimity through mere passive courage; Marie- 
Antoinette was heroic and dignified ; Madame Elizabeth devoted : 
on the first sounds of the tumult, the young princess broke from the 
grasp of her women and rushed to the " ceuil de bceuf," where she 
found the king surrounded by an angry crowd. She made her way 
towards him, and clasped him passionately in her arms. " The 
queen! it is the queen !" exclaimed a hundred voices at once, and 
at that hated name arms rose and glittered threateningly towards 
her. She waited her expected fate in calm and silent resignation ; 
the hurried explanations of a few officers of the palace alone saved 
her from instant death. "Ah! why," she mournfully exclaimed, 
" did you undeceive them ? Perhaps, by dying for the queen, I 
might have saved her." 

Bitterly conscious that her presence could only add to the peril of 
her husband, Marie-Antoinette was compelled to remain with her 
children in her own apartment. Her only defenders were a few 
devoted nobles, timid attendants, and the Princess of Lamballe; 
who, in spite of the queen's entreaties, had hastened to her post on 
the first rumour of danger. For two hours the populace vociferated 
at the door for admittance. It was at length thought prudent to 
comply. The doors were thrown open; the queen, her children, 
and the women having previously been entrenched in the recess of 
a window, behind a wide table. Here, for three hours, Marie- 
Antoinette, with unsubdued courage and incomparable dignity, stood 
listening to the insults of her enemies as they passed before her. 
The women especially addressed her in the fiercest and most dis* 
gusting language. "Did I ever injure you?" at length asked the 
queen, of one of these furies. " No," she answered ; " but you are 
the foe of the people." " You have been deceived," mournfully 
said the queen. " Alas ! I was happy when you all loved me." 
"Forgive me," said the woman, bursting into tears; " I see that 
you are good." Even Santerre, the fierce hero of the faubourgs, 
was touched at the sight of undeserved ignominy so royally endured. 
By looks and broken words he intimated his sympathy to the queen ; 
and from that time held secret intelligence with her. After being 
indulged in their tyranny for five hours, the crowd were at length 
dispersed. The emotion of Marie- Antoinette, on beholding her hus- 
band, betrayed itself by hysterical shrieks. For some time the 
king vainly endeavoured to calm her; when he had at length 
succeeded, he perceived that he still wore the coarse red cap he had 
been compelled to assume in order to save his life. He cast it away 
indignantly, bitterly exclaiming, "Ah ! madame, did you come from 
Vienna to behold me thus degraded?" 

From that day to the 10th of August, the sovereigns lived in the 
full consciousness of their approaching fate. They were persuaded 



APPREHENSIONS OF THE KING AND QUEEN. 255 

not to touch the meals prepared for them, and to partake in secret 
of the food provided by a few faithful servants. Their own appre- 
hensions were of a more serious nature. " They will not assassinate 
me," often observed the king; "they will judge me openly." The 
queen entertained the same foreboding. " I fear that they will try 
the king," she said to Madame Campan ; " as for me, I am a 
foreigner; they will murder me. . . . What will become of our 
poor children?" She wept bitterly. The femme de chambre, re- 
membering how subject she had formerly been to spasms and 
hysterics, offered her a composing draught. " Nay," said the queen 
with deep sadness, " it is only happy women that can feel nervous. 
I need no such remedies now." And Madame Campan bears wit- 
ness that the health of her royal mistress was never so uniformly 
excellent as when her whole energies were called forth by grief. 

Marie-Antoinette accustomed herself to the thought of death, but 
not to the calumnies of her foes. She one day surprised an at- 
tendant in the act of superintending her food, lest poison should be 
introduced into it. " Remember," said the queen, " it is not by 
poison, but by calumny, that I shall die." Of all the accusations 
against her, none wounded her so deeply as that of not loving France, 
and being still an Austrian at heart. Several times she was on the 
point of leaving her apartment, in order to address the crowd 
assembled under her window to insult her. " Yes," she passionately 
exclaimed, pacing her room with hurried steps, her cheeks growing 
flushed, and her heart swelling as she spoke — " yes, I will go and 
say to them : Frenchmen, they have persuaded you that I do not 
love France ! That I, the wife of your king, the mother of your 
dauphin — I, seated on the greatest throne of Europe, and blest 
amongst the daughters of Maria-Theresa ; that I do not love France ! 
Ah ! what have I to find in Vienna now ? Nothing, save tombs ! 
What have I to lose in France ? Everything that can render life 
honourable and dear ! " So spoke and felt the unhappy queen ; but 
sad and calm reflection soon showed her that the appeal she meditated 
would be made in vain. The evil passions which hatred had so 
long roused against her were not to be thus silenced by a few heroic 
words. Not until many years had passed over her unhonoured 
grave could even her memory obtain justice, pursued as it was still 
by those foul calumnies which had hastened her destruction. 

The events of the 20th of June filled the noble soul of La Fayette 
with indignation. He protested against the daily increasing anarchy, 
and offered his support to the king. But Marie-Antoinette preferred 
to his assistance the purchased and doubtful influence of Danton. 
" Never," she energetically exclaimed, " will we accept the aid of 
those who first seized on our power. If we perish, we shall perish 
with dignity: history awaits us." The queen, then, entertained 



256 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

strong hopes, founded on the approach of the foreign troops. One 
night in July, while she was looking at the moon, she observed to a 
friend near her, "When in a month this moon will appear again as 
we see it now, I shall be free and happy." The reluctance which 
the sovereigns had long felt to foreign intervention was now over. 
The grossest insults awaited them, in that palace where their prede- 
cessors had reigned as kings, and where they were held as the 
hostages of the people. In the royal chapel, where they came to 
pray, the singers greeted them with the Marseillaise or the " Ca Ira." 
On one of the last Sundays of July they repeated three times, with 
much exultation, these words from the Magnificat : " He hath put 
down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree."* 
Every day the sovereigns were confirmed in the knowledge of the 
attack the faubourgs intended to make on the palace. One night, 
when they expected it to take place, the king and Madame Elizabeth 
agreed not to waken Marie-Antoinette, who happened to be asleep. 
She complained bitterly, on the following day, that whilst his sister 
was with her husband, she had been allowed to slumber on. " I am 
his wife," she added, " and I will share every one of his dangers." 

The day came at length. The insurrection of the 10th of August 
was organized by the Jacobins and a portion of the Girondist party. 
They united, for a moment, to overthrow royalty and found the 
Republic, and to resume on the very next day their bitter and fatal 
dissensions. The night from the 9th to the 10th was spent in 
watchful anxiety by the royal family. The king confessed himself, 
and calmly prepared for death. More heroic, and less resigned, the 
queen vainly sought to communicate to him her own spirit of resist- 
ance. The pious and gentle Madame Elizabeth needed no prepara- 
tion : the sacrifice of her life had internally been made, ever since 
her devotedness to her brother prevented her from leaving the king- 
dom with her other relatives. 

From the dawn till the close of that eventful day, the behaviour 
of Marie-Antoinette was admirable. She was true to every feeling 
of her nature; true to the impulses of the woman, the mother, and 
the queen : whilst the king submitted with pious but ill-timed resig- 
nation to his destiny, her courage rose with every new danger. 
Could she have imparted this heroism to her husband, a desperate, 
and perhaps successful, resistance would have taken place. His 
timid, embarrassed, and awkward manner chilled the ardour of his 
defenders. The queenly bearing of Marie-Antoinette, her hurried but 
still dignified step, the kindling and penetrating glance of her blue 
eyes, the inexpressible majesty of her pale countenance, — everything 
in her person, — roused the admiration and enthusiasm of the volun- 

* Luke i. 52. 



UNION OF THE JACOBINS AND GIRONDISTS. 257 

teers before whose ranks she passed. But the emotion was? tran- 
sitory : she could not act, she could not even speak. The king 
uttered a few hesitating words ; heroic and spirit-stirring expressions 
rose to the lips of his wife, but they died unspoken : she would not 
provoke a contrast that might wound his dignity ; now more than 
ever she felt that her part was "to submit silently, and prepare to 
die." Carried away, however, by the excitement of the hour, she 
once seized on a pair of pistols, and presented them to her husband, 
exclaiming, as she did so, "Now is the time to show yourself a 
king ;" but she found no response in the peaceable soul of Louis 
XVI.: though he could die with calm dignity on a scaffold, the battle 
strife was not fit for him. He made no reply, and gently put the 
pistols away. 

The great difficulty of defending the palace was, that amongst 
the National Guards, who had been summoned to protect it, there 
were numerous allies of the insurgents. This became apparent 
when the king entered the gardens in order to review the troops in 
it : he was hooted, insulted, and very nearly assassinated. The 
sound of the execrations directed against him reached the apartment 
of Marie- Antoinette : she rushed to a window ; one of the ministers 
gently drew her back: "Good God!" she exclaimed, bursting into 
tears, " it is the king they are hooting." But such was her self- 
command that in a few seconds her eyes were dry, and her look 
had resumed its courageous serenity. According to the words of 
one who saw her then, " The Austrian lip and the aquiline nose 
fuller than usual, gave to her countenance something of majesty, 
which they that did not see her in those moments cannot well con- 
ceive." But the manner in which the king had been received by 
the troops charged to defend him, disheartened even the heroic 
Marie-Antoinette. She still protested, however, against the course 
recommended by their advisers — that the king and his family, 
giving up a useless resistance, should retire before the people had 
invaded their palace, and take refuge in the National Assembly. 
To yield without a struggle, to seek the protection of those who had 
brought down the royal power so low, and to forsake the devoted 
friends who were now ready to shed their blood for their sovereign, 
seemed to Marie-Antoinette the height of degradation and shame. 
In this her heroic heart inspired her well. What did this conces- 
sion avail Louis the XVI. ? He forfeited his crown, his kingly 
dignity, his life, the lives of his family, of the faithful Swiss, of his 
noble adherents — for a chance of safety. To risk all, in desperate 
cases, is often the truest, the highest wisdom. 

The cheeks of Marie- Antoinette burned with shame as the king 
at length took this resolve. She followed him in silence, with 
Madame Elizabeth and her children, to the asylum he had been 

22* 



258 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

persuaded to choose. On reaching the assembly, the royal family 
were placed in the narrow box occupied by the newspaper reporters. 
For fourteen hours they remained there, in a stifling atmosphere, 
listening to the deliberations of the assembly, and to the sounds of 
the combat carried on in the palace they had abandoned. The 
victory of the people, the massacre of the Swiss, and the suspension 
of royal power, were announced in their presence. The king pre- 
served his mournful calmness; the queen her indignant and unsub- 
dued bearing. The thought of the friends they had left behind 
them to perish ; of the children who slept unconscious on her knee, 
and who had lost, in one night, the fairest realm of Europe ; of her 
husband's future fate ; of her own ; of power and glory gone for 
ever, might tear her heart with inward agony, but could not cause 
one sign of weakness to appear on her imperial brow. 

For two days this torture was renewed, and the royal family 
heard, from the same place, the deliberations of the assembly ; 
everyone of which was to them as the knell of their fallen fortunes. 
Deprived of the commonest necessaries, Marie-Antoinette was com- 
pelled to borrow twenty-five louis of one of her attendants, and to 
accept the change of linen for herself and her children sent by the 
English ambassadress. 

On the third day, the captives, for such they were now, were 
conveyed to the Temple : a gloomy monastic residence, fit prison 
for a fallen king. Of the five persons who entered this dark dwell- 
ing, three left it for the scaffold ; one for a foreign land, where she 
still dwells, a sorrowful exile; the fifth, that pure and lovely child 
who slept on the bosom of Marie-Antoinette, died within the walls of 
his prison, after a few years of bodily torture and mental degradation, 
the innocent victim of the crimes and errors of his race, and of the 
pitiless vengeance of a nation. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Engraver's Daughter, Madame Roland. 

Two women may be said to have acted a part of more than 
common importance in the fall of monarchy. The one, as queen of 
France, by her ill-timed resistance to the Revolution ; the other, 
by her imprudent enthusiasm, as the secret inspirer of the republican 
party. 

Though thus tending, by different means and with far different 



MADAME ROLAND. 259 

objects, to the same end — an end which proved ruin for both, and 
for the principles they professed — these two women, divided by the 
vast difference of their social positions, never met. Their struggle 
was carried on through the men they influenced. This is no vague 
assertion : the struggle existed ; it was a long and severe one — the 
struggle of energetic reaction represented by Marie-Antoinette, and 
of republican ardour embodied by Madame Roland. The queen 
was certainly no more the whole reaction, than the engraver's 
daughter was the whole republican party ; but it is a significant and 
important fact, to find in two women the fittest representatives of the 
great principles which divided France at that momentous period of 
her history. 

We have already dwelt at some length on the conduct of Marie- 
Antoinette ; on the imprudence which hastened the fall of Louis 
XVI. ; on the heroism which gave to that fall some of her own 
native dignity. Whilst the queen thus pursued her ill-advised 
course, Madame Roland — as lovely, high-spirited, and inflexible, as 
the daughter of Maria Theresa, but with less of her frivolous grace, 
and with an intellect of more commanding grasp and energy — 
gathered around her, by the power of her beauty and eloquence, a 
party of talented and ardent men; who, yielding to her inspirations, 
hurried France towards a brief and premature republic. 

Beautiful — but of that chaste and almost spiritual beauty which 
is felt and not portrayed — tall and graceful in person, with a broad, 
clear brow, blue eyes, deep and thoughtful, dark curling locks that 
clustered around her neck, and features which, if not strictly regu- 
lar, were full of fire and expression, Madame Roland exercised 
an irresistible fascination on all those who approached her. Great 
as was the power of her personal charms, it yielded to that of 
her voice. Those who had heard it once could never forget it 
again. The low, clear tones — so mellow and so deep — haunted 
them like a strain of exquisite melody through years, long after she 
who gave them utterance had perished on a scaffold. 

But the real source of Madame Roland's influence must be sought 
in her dauntless and noble character. To the austere heroism of a 
Roman matron, she united that sensitive and passionate enthusiasm 
unknown to the ancients ; and which has sprung from Christianity, 
with its fount of boundless love, and its yearning thirst of self-sa- 
crifice. Great, indeed, as her talents were, they were far surpassed 
by a spirit as heroic, and yet as womanly, as ever tenanted female 
form. Earnest and deeply convinced herself, she could convince 
others: her eloquence was not merely the eloquence of genius; it 
sprang from the heart, and had that power which the heart alone 
can give. 

There is nothing, perhaps, more remarkable in the history of this 



260 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

eminent woman than the simple dignity of her earlier years. We 
may take her from her obscure youth, and follow her to the scaf- 
fold; we still find her the same pure, resolute, and independent 
being, bearing her unmerited isolation and poverty with the same 
fortitude which she afterwards displayed in a prison, with the pros- 
pect of a certain death before her. It is in this completeness of her 
character that lies its true, its perfect greatness. Manon Phlipon 
was born in Paris, in the year 1756, of obscure but respectable pa- 
rents : her father was an engraver of some talent, and in easy cir- 
cumstances. She was surrounded from her youth by those pure 
and religious influences which, notwithstanding the scepticism of the 
age, still lingered in the humble home of the bourgeois. Even as a 
child, Manon was grave and thoughtful, and displayed an inflexible 
temper, strange in one so young. She yielded to persuasion, but 
resisted force or arbitrary will with unflinching obstinacy. When 
she was about six years old, she was ordered, during one of her 
childish illnesses, to take a nauseous draught: the disgust, natural 
to her age, made her refuse. Her father immediately administered 
to her a personal chastisement, and imperatively bade her obey ; 
she refused again, and the correction was repeated ; a third injunc- 
tion to drink the medicine was then delivered to her ; this time the 
child said nothing : without even deigning to utter a refusal, she 
offered herself silently to the expected blow. A gentle prayer and 
remonstrance from her mother, who then interfered, sufficed to make 
her comply: overpowering her strong reluctance, she drank off the 
medicine without hesitation. Struck with the indomitable resolution 
of his daughter's temper, M. Phlipon yielded her entirely to the 
management of his wife, and forebore exercising over Manon an in- 
judicious tyranny, which might pervert, but could not subdue, the 
native energy of her character. 

Notwithstanding the inflexibility she displayed whenever she 
thought herself the victim of injustice or caprice. Manon was 
habitually of a gentle and serene disposition. Her earliest in- 
clination was a passionate fondness for books and flowers; with 
both of which she afterwards cheered her prison solitude. A 
child in years, a woman in the depth and earnestness of her feel- 
ings, she might often be seen seated in a recess of her father's 
workshop, poring for hours over an old volume of " Plutarch's 
Lives ;" her cheeks flushed, and her eyes swimming with tears, as 
she dwelt on the immortal pages which have roused and inspired so 
many heroic spirits. Often then the loved book fell from her grasp, 
whilst, with brow bent down and clasped hands, she silently wept, 
to think that she was not born in ancient Sparta or glorious Rome. 
When her mother, a woman of remarkable beauty and gentleness, 
wished to draw away Manon from her books, for which the child, 



YOUTH OF MADAME ROLAND. 261 

as has already been observed, always felt a strange yearning, she 
offered her flowers. The volume of " Plutarch," however, left her 
but seldom : she secretly carried it with her, instead of her prayer- 
book, whenever Madame Phlipon, who was extremely devout, took 
her to the parish church during Lent. The deeds of the heroic 
men of old were the " Acts of the Apostles," which steeled the soul 
of the martyr of liberty. Unconscious of the stern future destined 
to her, she already envied, perchance, in the dreams of her child- 
hood, that gloomy and yet glorious fate which has revealed her to 
posterity. And is not character, indeed, that secret power of fashion- 
ing life and events which was so long called destiny ? 

The parents of the young Manon, proud of her dawning beauty 
and singular talents, strained their means to give her an education 
worthy of her, though far above her position in life. History, geo- 
graphy, astronomy, chemistry, geometry, Latin, English, Italian, 
music, dancing, and drawing, were taught her by various masters ; 
who all admired her rapid progress. Her eagerness to learn was 
such that she often rose, unbidden, at five in the morning, in order 
to have more time for her studies. But knowledge could not absorb 
entirely a soul naturally so ardent and enthusiastic. That longing 
for ideal excellence, which she afterwards placed in stoic endurance 
and republican freedom, already haunted the mind of the thoughtful 
child. She wished to understand her own nature, to know the real 
destination of man, and to prepare herself for it, whatever it might be. 
This earnestness of purpose is one of the noblest characteristics of 
her brief existence. In youth, her aspirations took the form of re- 
ligious mysticism : she gave herself up to prayer and contemplation. 
Like the beautiful and impassioned Saint Theresa, of Avilar, she 
early sighed for martyrdom, and dwelt with silent rapture on the 
unfathomed mysteries of divine love. She entertained for a while 
the project of embracing a religious life : the sublime devotedness 
of the Sisters of Charity deeply touched her heart, already thirsting 
for self-sacrifice. Yielding to her earnest prayers, her parents 
allowed her to spend a year in a convent. In. this calm retreat, her 
mind acquired the deep and subdued tone of feeling characteristic of 
those persons who have lived in loneliness and self-communion. 
She loved to sit apart from her companions, reading and meditating 
in the solitary avenues of the grounds by which the convent was 
surrounded, or to muse in the lonely cloisters, over the grave of 
some departed nun, familiarizing her soul with the solemn thoughts 
of death and eternity. Though the religious sentiments of Manon 
Phlipon yielded, at a later period, to the scepticism of the age, their 
purifying influence is to be traced through every stage of her exist- 
ence. They imparted to her character that tenderness and calm 



262 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

fortitude which marked her domestic and public life, and chastened 
down the almost pagan heroism of her last hours. 

When the young girl — for she was now no longer a child — left 
the convent, and returned to her father's house, it was to lead a life 
of severe retirement. For several years she remained wholly se- 
cluded within the pure atmosphere of domestic life. Religion, study, 
and humble household cares filled her quiet existence, and fortified 
her soul for future struggles. An active correspondence which she 
then carried on with two of her convent friends, Henriette and Sophie 
Cannet, shows how calm and obscure was the life she led. The 
influence of early home is felt throughout every woman's life ; her 
world is essentially inward : it is in the practice of homely duties, in 
slight but repeated trials and sufferings, that she acquires the sub- 
dued gentleness, the habit of calm endurance, which, in more im- 
patient man, are the result of judgment or iron will. Manon 
accustomed herself to a severe self-discipline. She was early con- 
vinced that it is more easy to repress our passions than to satisfy 
them with due moderation. Whenever her active imagination 
seemed to her in need of control, she, therefore, studied geometry and 
algebra with passionate ardour. The austere turn of her mind made 
her dislike the licentious novels then in fashion ; history even lost its 
charms for her : she missed, in the events and characters to which 
it related, the heroism and dignity she vainly longed to find, and 
which she sought for a while in the stern doctrines of the Stoics. 
The change which then took place in her religious opinions con- 
firmed, instead of weakening, this austerity of principle. The philo- 
sophical works of the time destroyed her faith, for she proceeded on 
the erroneous principle that she was bound to prove logically to her- 
self every article of her creed ; but her soul was so noble and so 
pure, that, whilst she gave up her former belief in immortality, and 
even, for a time, her faith in the existence of a God, she did not 
swerve from the severe line of duty she had early resolved to adopt. 
"The gospel," she writes to her devout friend, Sophie Cannet, to 
whom she candidly confessed her scepticism, " is the best book I 
know. I receive this admirable code of morals, and am resolved to 
conform to it my whole conduct." So anxious was she not to yield 
to the secret impulse of passion, in her change of belief, that she 
openly declared, " that when we doubt, we must live as though we 
believed :" a scepticism very foreign in practice to that of the 
eighteenth century, whose philosophers believed in little or nothing, 
and acted according to their faith. 

The errors of Manon were those of her understanding: her heart 
remained pure. She confessed that when she listened to it, exclu- 
sively of reason, she believed : it was then that she rejected what she 
called " the melancholy truths of atheism." But, even when she 



263 

adopted those desolating doctrines to their widest extent, she conceived 
herself bound to adhere to the self-denying virtues of Christianity, as 
fullv as if she had been convinced of the immortality of the soul and 
the future reward of virtue. " Sincerity with myself, and the ac- 
cordance of my conduct with the system which I shall have adopted 
(whatsoever it may be), shall, at every time, prove the great object 
of my care, and the end of my efforts." A noble profession of faith, 
to which she ever remained true. 

Several years were thus spent by Manon in her father's house. 
The greatest portion of her time she gave to study; she occasionally 
amused herself with literary composition, but without the least inten- 
tion of devoting herself to authorship. " I early perceived," she 
observes in her memoirs, " that a female author lost more than she 
gained, since she was disliked by the men, and criticised by her 
own sex." This wise indifference to mere reputation did not extend 
to political matters. In spite of the obscurity of her birth and sta- 
tion, Manon could not feel herself foreign to the welfare of her coun- 
try. She took a deep interest in the struggles between the Parlia- 
ment and the crown. Even then she was eminently republican in 
her feelings and opinions : she resigned herself to an absolute mo- 
narchy, but always regretted that she was not born under a demo- 
cratic government. 

The philosophic and popular spirit which had been gradually 
descending through every class of the nation, now began to pervade 
the bourgeoisie. Manon adopted eagerly the doctrines of equality 
and brotherhood ; which the philosophers had borrowed from Chris- 
tianity, even whilst thev denied its divine origin. Like Milton's 
Archangel, " severe in youthful beauty," she gazed with austere dis- 
pleasure on the follies and vices of the elegant world, which she 
beheld from afar. Wounded pride, and a sense of her own worth, 
gave strength to those feelings; but, wherever chance might have 
placed her, a soul so ardent, and naturally so democratic as was hers, 
could never have sympathized with the aristocratic indifference and 
frivolousness of the upper classes. On the accession of Louis XVI. 
and Marie-Antoinette, her parents took her to Versailles. She saw 
at a distance the splendours of the court, and marked, with contempt 
and irritation, the idolatrous worship paid by the courtiers to the new 
sovereign. She thought of ancient Athens, that seat of magnificence 
and freedom ; but she only thought of its just and happy times. She 
forgot the death of Socrates, the exile of Aristides, and the condemna- 
tion of Phocion : " I did not know," she adds, whilst retracing those 
emotions of her youth in her lonely prison, " that Heaven reserved 
me to witness errors like those of which they became the victims, 
and, after having professed their principles, to participate in the 
glory of a similar persecution." 



264 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

These republican feelings increased the stoical nature of her cha- 
racter : she looked upon life as a struggle and a duty. The know- 
ledge of truth and the constant love of excellence were the only 
boons she asked of Heaven : " Oh, Thou, who hast placed me upon 
earth," she exclaimed, addressing the Divinity, to whom, in spite of 
sophistical arguments, her heart ever returned, " grant me to fulfil 
my destiny in the manner most conformable to thy holy will and the 
good of my brethren." But this resignation was not entire. Manon 
viewed her position with involuntary dissatisfaction. She felt that, 
with her opinions, she was shackled by the fetters of society : she 
was not free, she could not act ; and, as she passionately exclaimed, 
addressing her friend, " My whole strength is wasted in vainly 
endeavouring to shake off my fetters. Oh, liberty ! idol of energetic 
souls, source of every virtue, thou art but a name for me." 

The writings of Rousseau, with which she became acquainted 
towards this epoch, produced a powerful impression upon her mind: 
she eagerly seized on whatever his philosophy held of noble and 
pure, and longed to become acquainted with him personally. One 
of her friends, desirous of gratifying her, furnished her with an 
opportunity of paying the admired writer a visit. He had been com- 
missioned to deliver Rousseau a letter; instead of calling with it 
himself, he gave it to Mademoiselle Phlipon, who, not to take the 
philosopher by surprise, wrote to him, warning him of her visit, and 
of its object. Rousseau was probably in one of his gloomy fits 
when he received the letter of his young admirer; the handwriting- 
was that of a woman, but the conciseness and energy of style, con- 
vinced him it was the production of a man. Evidently this was 
only another trap of his numerous enemies : their malice was appa- 
rent in the choice of the agent, a young and, probably, beautiful 
girl, whom he would not be likely to mistrust. 

Unconscious of the suspicions she had aroused, Manon, with a 
beating heart, left her father's house on the appointed day, and pro- 
ceeded to the gloomy dwelling in the Rue de la Platriere, where 
Rousseau then resided. She ascended the dark staircase, and 
paused before the narrow door of the illustrious Genevese, with 
mingled emotion and respect. She rang the bell ; the sour-faced 
Therese opened the door, eyed her suspiciously, and when she had 
explained the object of her visit, abruptly informed her that M. 
Rousseau knew she was not the author of the letter she had sent ; 
that the stratagem was discovered, and that he would not see her ; 
with this she closed the door in her face. Little did Rousseau sus- 
pect that the young girl thus unceremoniously dismissed from his 
threshold, was destined to become one of the first and most illustrious 
victims of the democratic principles it had been the study of his life- 
time to teach. 



DEATH OF MADAME PHLIPON. 265 

Whilst the mind of the engraver's daughter was thus absorbed 
by study and philosophy, her serene and modest beauty attracted 
much admiration in the vicinity of her father's dwelling. She re- 
ceived various offers of marriage from wealthy tradesmen, but refused 
them all. The idea of uniting herself to a man with tastes and 
feelings inferior to her own revolted her: to remain single was in 
her opinion a far more preferable fate. She watched with jealous 
care over every feeling of her heart, and, as though actuated by a 
foreknowledge of her high destiny, proudly avoided indulging in 
anything resembling an unworthy affection. A young man named 
De la Blancherie produced, however, some impression upon her. 
He was amiable and alented ; she thought his character equal to 
her own, and invested him with all heroism and magnanimity in 
which her ardent soul delighted. Events soon undeceived her : she 
beheld in La Blancherie an ordinary mortal, and her love vanished 
with the illusion which had created it. " If I could be induced to 
love by mere eyesight," she wrote to Sophie Cannet, " I would 
sooner die of shame than yield to such love." " Burn nothing of 
what I write to you," she observed, in allusion to the same subject, 
and betraying that self-severity which ever characterized her ; "even 
should my letters be one day seen by the whole world, I do not wish 
to conceal the only proofs of my feelings and my weakness." 
Manon certainly did not dream, as she wrote this, that her supposi- 
tion would one day be realized, and that the confidential letters ad- 
dressed to Sophie Cannet, and carefully preserved by her, would be 
published, and reveal to the world all the purity and truth of her 
nature. 

The sudden death of Madame Phlipon was the first real sorrow 
which fell on her daughter. She had loved her mother passionately, 
and her grief was overwhelming. She gradually sank into a state 
of tangour, which for some time endangered her life. With her 
good and gentle mother vanished the happiness Manon had enjoyed 
in the home of her youth. Her father plunged into dissipation and 
extravagance, and foolishly squandered his daughter's property as 
well as his own. The grief she felt at M. Phlipon's imprudent con- 
duct, and her own altered prospects could not, however, disturb the 
cheerful serenity of Manon's temper : she found in all her sorrow 
that severe pleasure which results from the consciousness of inward 
rectitude and unmerited reproach calmly endured. She saw clouds 
lowering over her dark horizon, but she turned not away from the 
path : she still went onward " gathering her courage," in her own 
forcible expression, " as a cloak around her," and calmly waiting 
the coming of the storm. 

Notwithstanding the alteration which she foresaw in her 
father's circumstances, Manon still inflexibly refused to marry. It 

23 



266 WOMAN IN PRANCE. 

was not until her hand was asked by Roland de la Platiere that her 
resolve wavered. Roland, whom she had known for several years, 
was then on the verge of fifty. Tall and thin in person, reserved 
and somewhat abrupt in his manners, with a harsh voice and a 
severe look, few would have thought Roland likely to fascinate a 
young and beautiful woman. Nor was it love, indeed, which 
Manon felt for him. Since her unhappy experiment with La Blan- 
cherie, she held love as a beautiful chimera. But if she did not 
believe in the reality of this feeling — such as she understood it — she 
had still faith in friensdhip and esteem, and held no destiny so worthy 
of a woman's ambition as that of wife and mother. Beneath the 
austere aspect of Roland, she saw and admired a soul worthy of an 
ancient philosopher by its stern and unyielding virtues. His cha- 
racter was one which the passionate admirer of Plutarch's heroes 
could well appreciate. In her enthusiasm she even overrated his 
qualities ; of which a rigid and uncompromising honesty of purpose 
was the most prominent. If there was in him much to command 
esteem, it could not be said that there was much to love. 

The beauty and superior mind of Mademoiselle Phlipon inspired 
Roland with a very sincere feeling of admiration. With her appro- 
bation, he asked her hand from her father ; but M. Phlipon had con- 
ceived a secret dislike for the rigid philosopher, and refused to give 
his consent. Manon acted with sudden and unexpected decision. 
Several circumstances had long rendered it desirable that she should 
cease to reside in her father's house ; she now left it, and retired to 
the convent where she had formerly spent a year. The narrow 
income she had inherited from her mother did not permit her to 
enter this establishment as a boarder: she only rented a small room, 
where she prepared her own food, consisting of the coarsest and 
cheapest vegetables. Notwithstanding the severity of her priva- 
tions, books, music, and drawing, still yielded her their accustomed 
pleasures ; the only interruption to these occupations was the time 
she devoted to the mending of her father's linen : for, notwithstand- 
ing their separation, she still rigidly fulfilled the most minute of her 
duties towards him. The sense of freedom, and the secret and 
severe pleasure she always found in stoic endurance, supported her 
under this trying dispensation. 

Roland took six months to reflect on the course he had better 
adopt with regard to Mademoiselle Phlipon. When he returned to 
Paris — he had been at Amiens all this time — he determined on offer- 
ing her his hand once more. The cool prudence of his conduct 
had greatly abated her first enthusiasm ; but the high esteem she 
felt for his character, more than the sense of her loneliness, induced 
her, after a little hesitation, to accept his offer. They were, accord- 
ingly, married in 1781 : Manon was then in her twenty-fourth year. 



madame Roland's enthusiasm. 267 

In this union Madame Roland found peace and happiness; but such' 
happiness as few women would envy. The love of Roland was a 
love selfish and domineering, to which he expected every feeling of 
his wife to yield. So jealous was he of her exclusive affection, that 
he exacted from her the sacrifice of every female friendship of her 
youth. This injudicious severity would have alienated from him 
the heart of any other woman ; but the high esteem she felt for her 
husband, the entire confidence he reposed in her, and her own stern 
sense of duty, enabled Madame Roland to bear the trials of her new 
lot. A year after her marriage she proceeded with Roland to 
Amiens, where he was inspector of several important manufactories. 
It was there that she gave birth to her daughter and only child, that 
Eudora whom she so passionately loved. 

From the first, Madame Roland assisted her husband in the lite- 
rary labours he undertook : she transcribed his compositions, cor- 
rected the proof-sheets, and, with a humility rare in one of her high 
talents, seldom ventured to oppose or contradict his opinions. Domes- 
tic tasks and walks in the country were the only relaxations of this 
severe and monotonous existence. From Amiens they removed 
after four years to Villefranche near Lyons, the home of Roland. 
Here Madame Roland, though not without sufficient annoyance from 
her husband's relatives — a younger brother and an aged mother-in- 
law — led the same calm domestic life, in which she found the hap- 
piness which attends the accomplishment of a noble and self-imposed 
duty. Her charity to the poor, the kindness with which she assisted 
them in their necessities, or attended them when they were sick, 
soon caused her to be almost worshipped in the vicinity of her new 
home. The opening events of the French Revolution first disturbed 
this obscure but happy existence. 

The dawn of that great convulsion, so full as it was then of glo- 
rious hopes, so free from presentiments of evil, filled the republican 
soul of Madame Roland with a fervent enthusiasm, which she com- 
municated to the colder mind of her husband. She knew not what 
events might bring forth for her ; but, whether it was good or evil, 
she rejoiced with her whole heart at the prospect of the general wel- 
fare, and energetically protested her willingness to submit without a 
murmur to whatever fate might decree. "Blood may be shed," she 
enthusiastically wrote from her retirement to a friend, "but tyranny 
will not be re-established : her iron throne is tottering throughout 
all Europe. The efforts of the potentates can only accelerate its 
fall. Let it fall ! even though we should be buried beneath its ruins ! 
A new generation will arise to enjoy the freedom we shall have be- 
queathed, and to bless our efforts in its cause." A sort of dim con- 
sciousness of the future seemed to haunt her mind, even in the calm 
retreat of Villefranche. As early as 1790, we find her protesting 



268 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

in a letter to one of her political friends, that " whenever it may be 
her destiny to die, she shall know how to leave life with feelings 
worthy of her friends and her country." It is easy to imagine with 
what feelings of deep interest she watched from her solitude the 
progress of events. The time was gone when she wept at not hav- 
ing been born in one of the republics of old. Now, she proudly 
thought, France need no longer envy ancient freedom. VVas she 
not pure, regenerated, and free? The political opinions of Roland 
caused him to be elected one of the first members of the municipality 
of Lyons : he was sent to Paris by this body in the early part of 
1791. Madame Roland accompanied him to the capital. 

Almost immediately after her arrival, she hastened to the consti- 
tuent assembly. She was dissatisfied with all she saw and heard 
there. Her clear and practical mind soon grew wearied of the end- 
less discussions which marked every meeting. She had little faith 
in constitutional monarchy. That a nation which could regain its 
entire freedom, should surrender a considerable portion of it to a 
monarch formerly possessed of unlimited authority, and never regret 
it ; and that this monarch, educated in the idea of divine right, should 
be satisfied with exactly the portion of power given him by the na- 
tion, and never seek for more, seemed to her equally dangerous and 
improbable. The event showed that she was in the right : that 
abuses had extended too far for constitutional monarchy to prove 
successful in France, and that a republic was almost the only possi- 
ble solution of numerous difficulties. Roland had, amongst the 
members of the extreme party, many connexions who were as dis- 
satisfied with the prospect of constitutional monarchy as Madame 
Roland. The beauty of this remarkable woman, her enthusiasm 
and eloquence, soon exercised a powerful fascination over her hus- 
band's friends. Pethion, Buzot, Brissot, and Robespierre, met four 
times a week at her house, to discuss the measures it was expedient 
for them to adopt in the National Assembly. Madame Roland took 
no share in those discussions: like Madame de Maintenon, when 
Louis XIV. and his ministers met in her boudoir, she sat apart, busy 
with some piece of needle-work, or even writing letters, a deeply 
interested though silent observer of all that passed. The tedious- 
ness, the hesitation, which marked these lengthy and fruitless con- 
versations annoyed her decisive and energetic mind. She longed to 
utter her own brief and practical opinions on the subjects discussed, 
but that feeling of womanly reserve, which never forsook her, always 
checked the words as they rose to her lips. 

Notwithstanding her apparent calmness, she was already seized 
with the revolutionary fever. She felt, as must have felt all those 
who were cast on that stormy sea, a new intensity in the power of 
existence. " We live ten years in twenty-four hours," she wrote to 
one of her friends, in July, 1791. And it was well that it should be 



RETURNS TO DOMESTIC DUTIES. 269 

so; for those whose hours sped along thus swiftly, gathering years 
in their brief compass, were destined to perish in their youth, long 
before the span of life allotted to humanity should have been ex- 
hausted. The death of Mirabeau, who alone opposed the tide of 
democracy and the imprudent flight of the king to Varennes, in- 
creased the republican feelings of Madame Roland. She lost all 
faith in the sincerity of Louis XVI. " How could it be believed," 
she impatiently asked, " that a king who had fled from the constitu- 
tion before it was completed, would be faithful to it when it was so 
evidently distasteful to him? Why capture him? why bring him 
back from Varennes? Let the perjured monarch fly, and the re- 
public be proclaimed at once." How much misery, blood, and 
shame might have been spared to France if Louis XVI., instead of 
being brought back to degradation and death, had been allowed to 
proceed on his journey. The young republic, pure and free, would 
not then have been stained with the innocent blood of one whose 
only crime was that of being born an absolute king. On the even- 
ing of the day when the monarch's flight was discovered, Pethion, 
Buzot, Brissot, and Robespierre had met as usual in the house of 
Madame Roland. The first three and her husband agreed with her 
concerning the expediency of a republic, and considered the flight 
of Louis as equivalent to an abdication. Robespierre alone differed 
from them : it was characteristic of him that he never went farther 
than events, though he was always ready to go as far. On this oc- 
casion he felt convinced that the royalists had prepared a general 
massacre of the patriots, and that he should be one of the earliest 
victims : a belief which gave a more livid hue than usual to his thin 
and greenish countenance. When Madame Roland and her friends 
spoke of a republic, Robespierre bit his nails, and eyeing his future 
victims, then his friends, asked them with a sneer what they meant 
by a republic. 

The republic of their enthusiastic dreams was one of freedom and 
glory, as pure as it was ideal ; time showed what blood and tyranny 
it took for Robespierre to found his. In the month of September of 
the year 1791, Roland, whose mission was over, returned with his 
wife to Villefranche. 

Here Madame Roland resumed her domestic duties ; to all appear- 
ance, as calm as ever. But there had arisen in her soul a fever 
which could only be quenched in her blood. All the burning en- 
thusiasm of her youth, all the passion which slumbered in her heart, 
and which her marriage with Roland only repressed, broke forth 
with the strength of a long-hidden fire. She gave to freedom and 
her country that love which, in her as in all noble minds, was only 
a longing for ideal excellence such as no human being or earthly 
affection could have gratified. 

23* 



270 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Madame Roland and the Girondists. 

In the month of December of the year 1791 , Roland and his wife, 
unable to remain longer away from the centre of agitation, returned 
to Paris. The constitution had been accepted by the king. The 
labours of the Constituent Assembly were over, and those of the 
Legislative Assembly now began. 

Three parties divided the new assembly : the Girondists, the 
Mountaineers, and the Plain. The first took their name from the 
department of the Gironde, whence most of them came : they were 
young, eloquent, and enthusiastic men ; but rash, inexperienced, and 
deficient in firmness or stability. With far less talent, and much 
more violence, than the Girondists, the Mountaineers carried in their 
convictions an earnestness and fanaticism which could scarcely fail 
to insure their ultimate triumph. They were called Mountaineers, 
from the elevated benches on which they sat in the Assembly. The 
name of Plain was given to a weak and moderate party which occu- 
pied the central and lowest portion of the house. 

The unhappy dissensions of the Girondists and Mountaineers, 
which proved the ruin of the republic, did not begin in earnest until 
the fall of monarchy. Previously to the 10th of August, serious 
differences arose between these two parties ; but they were not such 
as to prevent them from acting together every time a new blow 
could be directed against royal authority. This bond of republican 
feeling gradually drew them around Madame Roland. Without 
seeking for it, she thus found herself ere long the nucleus of a large 
and powerful party. The singular and expressive beauty of her 
face and person, which reminded some of her admirers of Rousseau's 
Julie, the native elegance and dignity of her manners, her harmo- 
nious voice and flowing language, and, above all, the fervour and 
eloquence of her patriotism, seemed to mark her out for the part 
which had been instinctively assigned to her. She presided over 
political meetings with so much tact and discretion, as to appear a 
calm spectator ; whilst she, in reality, imparted her own fervent 
enthusiasm to all those who came near her. The young and hand- 
some Barbaroux, the elegant Buzot, the licentious Louvet, Sillery, 
the husband of Madame de Genlis, Vergniaud, the orator, equally 
admired and respected her. Though possessed of more. than ordi- 
nary attractions, and married to a man who might have been her 
father ; though surrounded by men, young, handsome, and eloquent ; 



MADAME ROLAND DISTRUSTS THE KING. 271 

Madame Roland, strong in her severe purity, preserved her character 
and reputation unsullied. Her friends spoke of her with mingled 
veneration and enthusiasm. "Oh! Roland! Roland !" exclaimed 
Louvet, after her untimely death, " how many virtues have they 
assassinated with thee! how much virtue, beauty, and genius have 
they not immolated, in the person of thy wife — a far greater man 
than thou ever wertl" 

The admiration his wife excited was the cause of Roland's rise 
and ruin. When the Girondist ministry was formed, in March, 
1792, his friends had him named Minister of the Interior. Madame 
Roland, without allowing herself to be dazzled by her new position, 
quietly removed from her little apartment in the Rue de la Harpe, to 
the splendid hotel formerly occupied by Calonne and Necker. Her 
political power during this her husband's first ministry was, like that 
she had previously exercised, great though occult. She influenced 
not only the acts of her husband, who reposed unbounded confidence 
in her, but likewise those of the entire Girondist party. She gene- 
rally sat in a little drawing-room, furnished with extreme simplicity, 
and where Roland received his colleagues and most intimate iriends. 
They concerted their measures in her presence, and often asked 
and took her advice. Her tact and gentleness were especially dis- 
played in moderating their discussions whenever they became too 
animated. 

Madame Roland instinctively imparted to the Girondists that feel- 
ing of mistrust against the king, which was strengthened in her by 
the earnestness of her republican tendencies. She had no faith in 
the sincerity of Louis XVI. since the flight to Varennes, and despised 
his vacillating weakness. She believed the calumnious imputations 
cast on the morals of the queen, and hated her as the persevering 
enemy of freedom. If she was too severe, and often unjust, towards 
the sovereigns, Madame Roland did not err when she pronounced 
the constitution impracticable. Experience only strengthened this 
conviction, which the Girondists gradually learned to share. They 
had never been very sincere partisans of constitutional monarchy, 
and they now affected to consider the sovereign as a secret foe, 
whom it was their duty to watch and detect. Let it not be forgotten 
that neither Louis XVI. nor Marie-Antoinette could appear to their con- 
temporaries as they have since been seen by posterity, with a halo of 
misfortune to purify and exalt their characters. They were then 
real, unromantic, and imprudent human beings, most awkwardly 
and unhappily placed on the path of the revolution. Notwithstand- 
ing their prejudices, the Girondist ministers were frequently touched 
by the evident goodness of heart of the king; but the imprudently 
avowed hatred of the queen for the constitution, and her well-known 
influence over her husband, steeled them against Louis XVI. even 



272 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

more effectually than the persevering mistrust of Madame Roland. 
This mistrust, caused by a jealous love of freedom, is the only sfain 
which rests on her political career. It unfortunately happens that, 
in times of national strife and convulsion, few, even amongst the 
most noble-minded, are willing to believe in the sincerity of their 
opponents ; they are thus led, not only into injustice, but into great 
political errors. The exaggerated doubts of Madame Roland, and 
of the Girondists, concerning the sincerity of the king, ultimately 
proved as fatal to themselves as to the sovereign. In one respect, 
however, the penetration of Madame Roland did not deceive her : 
she perceived from the first the double part Dumouriez was playing, 
and she repeatedly warned her husband and his colleagues of that 
general's insincerity. 

With this mistrust on one side, and a hesitation which almost 
warranted it on the other, the policy of the ministers and that of the 
king daily became more irreconcilable. The ministers exacted that 
he should sanction the decrees of the Assembly against the emigrants 
and the clergy, and Louis refused to give those decrees the sanction 
by which they were to become law. Madame Roland, rendered im- 
patient by this delay, and feeling anxious to screen her husband 
from any responsibility he might incur, advised him to write a letter 
to the king urging him to compliance, and to keep a copy of this 
letter for his personal justification. Roland consented, and, as his 
wife always assisted him in his literary compositions, he now re- 
quested her to undertake this which she had suggested : she com- 
plied. This famous letter was couched in the most austere language: 
il contained truths, but too harshly expressed to be acceptable. Had 
it been written to a powerful monarch, this letter would have been 
courageous and noble; but addressed to a weak and captive king on 
the brink of ruin, it was cruel and ungenerous. Her hatred for 
royalty, and her zeal for the republic, rendered Madame Roland 
unjust. The only effect which the letter she bad written in her hus- 
band's name produced upon the king, was to make him persist in 
his conduct, and dismiss his ministry. Roland immediately read 
the copy of his letter to the Assembly, as a justification of his con- 
duct. The resistance of the king, and his dismissal of the popular 
ministers, heightened the deep feeling of irritation which already 
existed against Louis XVI. Roland and the other ministers were 
hailed as martyrs to their patriotism, and Roland's letter was ordered 
to be printed, and sent to the eighty-three departments. 

The power of Madame Roland was not such as to vanish with 
station. Her influence was never greater than in the humble apart- 
ment of the faubourg St. Jacques, to which she retired on leaving 
the minister's splendid hotel. The Girondists, now openly aiming 
at a republic, gathered around her, and spoke with more freedom 



THE GIRONDISTS GATHER AROUND HER. 273 

than they had yet displayed. Amongst those who then visited her 
assiduously was Barbaroux, whom a vague conjecture asserts to 
have been the object of that secret passion to which Madame Ro- 
land remotely alludes in a passage of her memoirs. 

Barbaroux was the handsomest of the Girondists; he came from 
Marseilles, where the descendants of the Grecian colonists often in- 
herit the old classic beauty of their ancestors. Handsome as an 
Antinous, eloquent and patriotic, Barbaroux may have appeared to 
Madame Roland the realization of her youthful dreams. Her beauty 
and noble character inspired him with a deep and respectful admira- 
tion. He soon discerned, that if "of all modern men Roland most 
resembled Cato," it was to his wife that he owed his courage and 
talents. They frequently conversed on the state of the country, on 
the perfidy of the court, and the failing cause of freedom. Once, 
when Roland had been expressing his mournful apprehensions, "his 
wife," observes Barbaroux in his memoirs, "wept as she listened to 
him ; I wept myself, as I looked upon her." With the promptness 
which characterized him, Barbaroux suggested to his friends that 
the south of France might be made the stronghold of freedom. As 
the enthusiastic young man developed his plan, and spoke of the re- 
publican tendencies of his countrymen, the austere brow of Roland 
gradually became more serene, whilst his beautiful wife, drying her 
tears, listened with hopeful joy. If any love did indeed exist be- 
tween these two kindred spirits, it was such as neither would have 
blushed to avow. 

A few days after Roland's dismissal from the ministry, the events 
of the 20th of June took place ; the 10th of August and the fall of 
monarchy speedily followed. Roland and his colleagues were re- 
called to power: his wife re-entered the minister's hotel ; the trium- 
phant Girondists once more gathered around her: but their day was 
gone, and, after sharing their errors and illusions, Madame Roland 
was now destined to endure their sufferings and noble martyrdom. 

The events of the 10th of August could never have taken place, 
but for the union of the Girondists and the Mountaineers. Casting 
aside their dissensions, the two parties united their efforts for that 
one day : but they renewed their quarrel on the morrow. In their 
impatience of once more getting into power and founding the Re- 
public, the Girondists overlooked the immense advantage they gave 
to a daring and unscrupulous party. When their object was gained, 
they wished to check the progress of the anarchy they had helped 
to create; but the Mountaineers had now their own ends to further, 
and they were prepared to make their road to popular favour through 
blood, were it so needed. They soon perceived how shrinkingly 
the Girondists held back whenever the blood of the innocent was at 
stake, and yet how reluctant they were to yield their popularity. 



274 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

The Mountaineers made a fearful use of the scruples and weakness 
of their antagonists; who now found themselves, like Mirabeau at 
the epoch of his death, on the path of the torrent they had let loose. 
Compelled to endure the massacres of September and the execution 
of Louis XVI. for the sake of their own safety, they revolted, at 
length, against this sanguinary tyranny, and perished for having 
protested against the Reign of Terror. 

No sooner was monarchy overthrown than the Girondists per- 
ceived their weakness. Danton and his accomplices organized a 
general massacre of the royalists then imprisoned in Paris. Roland, 
though Minister of the Interior, only possessed a nominal power : 
the real authority was invested in the hands of Danton ; the use he 
made of that authority was to deluge the prisons with blood. Never 
were female heroism and devotedness displayed more conspicuously 
than during those fearful massacres. They began on the 2d of Sep- 
tember, 1792, at the Abbaye, with the murder of thirty priests, and 
of the Swiss soldiers imprisoned since the 10th of August. 

An usher named Maillard attempted to give some show of legality 
to these hideous doings. He presided in the prison over a mock 
tribunal, before which the victims were summoned in rapid succes- 
sion : a few were purposely acquitted. Amongst those who came 
to receive their sentence, was M. de Sombreuil, the obnoxious 
governor of the Invalides, and whose name has been immortalized . 
by the heroic devotedness of his daughter. Her love for her father 
had induced her to share his captivity and dangers ever since his 
arrest. On the day of the massacre, she stood, from the beginning, 
near the tribunal, within hearing of all that passed, ready to perish 
with her father. He came, was heard, and condemned. The door 
of the court- yard where the victims met their fate opened, but Ma- 
demoiselle de Sombreuil threw herself before the old man ; she clung 
to him with the energy of despair, and in heartrending accents be- 
sought the blood-stained murderers to spare her father's life. Moved 
by her tears and passionate entreaties, they granted the request; but 
on a fearful condition : blood was then flowing around them like water ; 
the blood of the aristocrats; would she prove her patriotism by 
drinking a glass of the still warm tide. " Give it," she energetically 
replied, " you will see what a daughter can do for her father ;" and 
she drank unshrinkingly. The courage of her love awed the mon- 
sters around her: struck with admiration, they protected her against 
their comrades, and took her and her father home in triumph. 

The youthful daughter of the author Cazotte emulated the heroism 
of Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, whose room she shared in the Abbaye. 
The enthusiastic piety of Cazotte, and his correspondence with La- 
porte, were the crimes for which he had been incarcerated. His 
daughter, of her own accord, accompanied him to prison ; she knew 



FEMALE HEROISM AND DEVOTEDNESS. 275 

some time beforehand of the massacres that were going to take place 
— for the fact was generally suspected — and endeavoured to conciliate 
the ferocious Marseillaise, by whom it was to be effected. Softened 
by her youth and beauty, they promised to spare her father's life. 
Notwithstanding this assurance, Mademoiselle Cazotte accompanied 
her father to the tribunal ; he was condemned ; but when the door 
opened that led to the fatal court, his child, like Mademoiselle de 
Sornbreuil, threw herself before him, and interceded for his life. 
The Marseillaise, faithful to their promise, saved them both from the 
fury of the crowd, and did not leave them until they had found a 
safe asylum. One of the men who had rendered themselves guilty 
of this act of compassion, confessed the fact, with some misgiving, 
to Marat on the following day. Thirsting as he did for the blood of 
the aristocrats, Marat could not restrain his tears as he heard of the 
heroic devotedness of Cazotte's daughter : " Nay," he exclaimed, 
" the father who had such a child deserved to live." The pure and 
holy love of Mademoiselle Cazotte could not, however, shield her 
father from further danger ; a short time after the massacres of Sep- 
tember, he was again incarcerated ; his daughter was sent to a 
different prison, and not released until he had perished on the scaffold, 
lest she should soften judges as she had softened murderers. 

The royalist ladies imprisoned after the 10th of August were, 
from the beginning of the massacre, marked out as fit victims of the 
popular hatred. The Princess de Tarente gloried, with undaunted 
courage, in her friendship for the queen, defied her murderers, and 
roused, by her daring spirit, whatever trace of generosity still 
lingered in their hearts : she was dismissed unhurt. The Princess 
of Lamballe proved less fortunate. Her father-in-law, the Duke of 
Penthievre, who loved her as his own child, spent a hundred thou- 
sand crowns in order to purchase her life from her gaolers and 
judges. Her known attachment to Marie-Antoinette was the only 
crime of this beautiful and amiable woman. She was incarcerated 
in the prison of La Force, and for two days remained in her cell 
apparently forgotten by the murderers : from her room she could 
hear the sounds of the massacre below ; rendered almost unconscious 
by terror, she only wakened from one fainting fit to sink into an- 
other. On the second day two National Guards entered her room, 
and abruptly bade her follow them to the Abbaye: she rose, hastily 
attired herself, and obeyed. On reaching the tribunal, and behold- 
ing the traces of the recent massacre, she fainted away with horror. 
When she recovei-ed consciousness, her judges bade her swear to 
love equality and freedom, and hate kings and queens. " I can take 
the first oath," she replied ; " but hatred of the king and queen I 
cannot swear, for it is not in my heart." " Swear," said one of the 
judges, " or you perish." The princess remained silent. They then 



276 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ordered her to be taken out into the street, recommending her to cry 
out " Long live the nation," as soon as she left the prison. She 
*brgot to do so, and uttered an exclamation of horror on beholding 
the pavement strewn with corpses. Her pure and touching beauty 
interested many of those who now gazed upon her, and, anxious to 
save her, thev exclaimed from the crowd, " Crv out ' Long live the 
nation,' and nothing shall be done to thee." The princess was, un- 
fortunately, too terrified to obey : the silence of fear was taken for 
the refusal of defiance : a blow was aimed at her head ; her blood 
flowed ; in an instant she was felled to the earth, and murdered, with 
circumstances of the most atrocious barbarity. Her head, borne on 
a pike, was carried all over Paris, and displayed before the windows 
of the royal family in the Temple. The king threw himself before 
Marie-Antoinette, and drew her away before her look could rest on 
the livid features of her murdered friend. 

The Princess of Lamballe was not the last victim: her death, 
which made the old Duke of Penthievre die with grief, was but the 
prelude of deeds more hideous still, but foreign to the purport of this 
work. 

Theroigne de Mericourt, and women of her stamp, took an active 
share in these massacres. The wives of the " egoroeurs" (cut- 
throats) regularly brought their husbands their soup, as though they 
were engaged in some ordinary work. Heroism, devoted love, pity, 
fierceness, and callous indifference, were alike displayed during those 
days of terror; which, whatever may be said to the contrary, were 
indeed " the crime of a few men, but not the crime of libertv."* 

The soul of Madame Roland was filled with horror at what she 
saw and heard. If anything increased her despair, it was the con- 
sciousness that her husband, though Minister- of the Interior, could 
not prevent, could not do anything. " We are under the knife of 
Robespierre and Marat," she despairingly wrote to a friend, on the 
5th of September; and on the 9th she added, "You knew my enthu- 
siasm for the Revolution; well, I am ashamed of it now: it has been 
sullied by monsters; it is hideous." The proclamation of the Re- 
public, which, at another time would have filled her with joy, now 
seemed to her prophetic soul but the forerunner of the fall of the men 
by whom that Republic had been founded. The Girondists them- 
selves were not unconscious of their approaching destiny. On the 
evening of the day on which the Republic was proclaimed, they met 
at the house of Madame Roland. At the close of their frugal supper, 
Vergniaud rose, and filled his glass, in order to drink to the Republic. 
Before he drank, Madame Roland scattered rose-leaves, from her 
bouquet, over the wine, according to the custom of the ancients. 

* Lamartine, Hist, des Girondins, vol. iii. p 400. 



MARAT DENOUNCES MADAME ROLAND. 277 

When the beverage was quaffed, Vergniaud, setting down the glass, 
turned towards Barbaroux, and said, in a low voice — " Branches of 
the cypress-tree, Barbaroux, not roses, should have been scattered 
on our wine to-night: who knows, if, in drinking to a Republic 
whose cradle is steeped in the blood of September, we be not drink- 
ing to our own deaths? Nevertheless, and if this wine were my 
blood, I would still quaff it to equality and freedom." 

The energetic protest of Roland against the massacres drew down 
on him, and on his wife, who was known to have inspired it, the 
hatred of Marat and Danton. No consideration of policy or safety 
could induce Madame Roland to suffer the intimacy or protection 
of a man who always appeared to her stained with the blood of 
September. Notwithstanding Danton's attempts to effect a reconci- 
liation, she never ceased — from September 1792 to the execution of 
Louis XVI. in January 1793, when Roland resigned — to urge her 
husband to a noble though unavailing resistance against the power 
of the Mountaineers. This energetic abhorrence of crime and cri- 
minals she communicated to the whole party of the Gironde. The 
passion and eloquence which had hastened the progress of the Revo- 
lution, were now all directed to the holy object of purifying it from 
the stains cast upon it by a few guilty men. And in this, her second 
and nobler task, she displayed still more fearlessness and indepen- 
dence than when she urged her friends to the overthrow of royalty. 
The power of Madame Roland over the Girondists at this epoch, 
and the apprehensions her eloquence and energy excited, are 
proved by the hatred which was suddenly displayed against her by 
the Jacobins. Marat included her in his denunciations against the 
Girondists, and assailed her in the coarsest terms in his "Ami du 
Peuple." Matters went so far that her life and that of Roland were 
openly threatened. On several occasions, they were persuaded by 
their friends to leave the ministerial hotel, and sleep in some secure 
place. Madame Roland complied very reluctantly. Her heroic- 
soul told her that if such a crime were to be committed by the anar- 
chists, the very horror it would inspire might be useful to liberty. 
She justly thought that those who engage in a revolution, and who 
value honour and freedom, must learn to count life as nothing. 
Towards the close of her husband's ministry, when events became 
daily more critical, she absolutely refused to leave the hotel. The 
only precaution she adopted, was to sleep with a pistol under her 
pillow, in order to protect herself from the brutality of those who 
might attempt her life. 

The quarrels of the Jacobins and the Girondists became more 
bitter and incessant as they drew to a close. The Girondists in- 
exorably repulsed Danton every time he attempted a reconciliation : 
thev would either have a pure Republic, or they would perish. 

24 



278 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Urged by Madame Roland, they, moreover, resolved to attack 
Robespierre; whose power had rapidly increased. In a speech of 
memorable eloquence, Louvet unveiled the secret ambition of the 
revolutionary pharisee : but the attack only recoiled on its authors, 
and tended to strengthen the power of the future dictator. The 
resolve of the convention to accuse and judge the king, might alone 
have warned the Girondists of their fate. A friend of Madame 
Roland was with her and her husband, when they learned this im- 
portant decision of the convention. " The convention both accuses 
and judges," exclaimed Roland ; " it is dishonoured !" His wife 
said nothing; but when their child came in, she pressed her to her 
heart, and wept silently. Impatient to ruin a woman from whose 
talents and energy they felt they had so much to. fear, the Jacobins 
sought to implicate Madame Roland in an imaginary royalist con- 
spiracy, through the agency of a contemptible spy named Viard. 
She was summoned before the bar of the convention, in order to 
justify herself from Viard's accusations. She appeared in the as- 
sembly with the easy dignity that always characterized her. On 
being asked her name, " My name is Roland," she replied, " a name 
of which I am proud'; for it is that of a good and honourable man." 
Several other questions were addressed to her, such as, " If she 
knew Viard? w r hen she had seen him? and what had passed between 
them?" She answered, that Viard had twice written to her to ob- 
tain an interview; that she had seen him once; and, after some 
conversation, having discovered him to be a spy, had dismissed him 
with contempt. The evident falsehood of Viard's accusation, and 
the simple dignity of Madame Roland's replies, told equally in her 
favour. Amidst the general applause of the members, the president 
decreed that the honours of the sitting belonged to her. The Jaco- 
bins in the galleries remained silent. Marat rose, and pointing to 
them, gloomily observed: "Look at that public; it is wiser than 
you are." 

The trial of Louis XVI. betrayed the increasing weakness of the 
Girondists. Many of them not only sympathized with him as a 
man, but thought that the nation, though it might depose, could not 
judge its monarch. But, with this conviction, they, nevertheless, 
sanctioned the trial, and took part in it ; lest their refusal should fur- 
nish the Jacobins with a pretence of accusing them of royalist ten- 
dencies. Two days after the king's execution, on the 23d of 
January, 1793, Roland resigned his post ; which had long been 
purely nominal. Oppressed with grief at the dangers she foresaw 
for the Republic, Madame Roland lived in great retirement. A few 
of her friends still visited, however, the woman whom Marat and 
Camille Desmoulins attacked in their pamphlets, and whom Danton 
openly denounced as the Circe of the Republic. The only charm 



M. ROLAND RESIGNS. 279 

she used was that of her own heroic spirit, which she sought to in- 
fuse into the men who struggled for freedom against anarchy. This 
struggle was drawing to a close. After several unsuccessful 
attempts, the Jacobins resolved to coerce the convention into submis- 
sion to their will : that will was, that the twenty -two Girondist 
members should be accused of treason, arrested, and condemned. 
For that purpose they organized an insurrection, which lasted from 
the 30th of May to the 2nd of June. The convention, threatened, 
insulted, and besieged, at length yielded to force, and passed the 
decree which doomed its most illustrious and eloquent members to 
death, and France to anarchy and terror. 

The hatred of the triumphant Mountaineers did not forget either 
Roland or his wife. On the evening of the 31st of May, six armed 
men, provided with an order from the Revolutionary Committee, 
came to arrest the ex-minister. Roland energetically declared that 
nothing but force should induce him to obey the order of this illegal 
power. The men, not daring to enforce their mandate, left a guard 
upon Roland and retired for new orders. Madame Roland, though 
seriously ill, rose, dressed herself hastily, and immediately proceeded 
to the convention, to protest against the attempted outrage. She 
made her way through the troops and armed men who surrounded 
the Tuileries, but could not succeed in gaining admittance to the 
hall, where the Girondists were then engaged in their death 
struggle. 

From the place where she stood waiting, she could hear, however, 
the sounds of the stormy debate within. Vergniaud, on learning 
that she was there, came and exchanged a few words w T ith her. She 
urged him to procure her admittance; she thought that an energetic 
and eloquent, reproof might rouse, perchance, the convention from 
the stupor into which it had been thrown by the audacity of the 
Jacobins. Vergniaud dissuaded her from this course, of which he 
showed her the perfect uselessness. She returned home to consult 
with Roland. He had escaped by a back door, and she found him 
concealed in the house of a friend. After a short deliberation be- 
tween them, it was agreed that she should return to the convention. 
She did so; but when she reached the Tuileries, she found that the 
sitting was over : a group of cannoneers, who still lingered on the 
Place de la Revolution, where they had come to intimidate the con- 
vention, informed her that the Jacobins had prevailed, and that their 
next triumph would be the decree of accusation against the Giron- 
dists ; which the Assembly could not fail to pass when it met on the 
following day. 

Madame Roland had long been aware that when her friends fell, 
she must fall with them. She was known to have shared their prin- 
ciples, and guided many of their measures ; the blame of her hus- 



280 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

band's acts had been publicly thrown upon her by Danton in the 
hall of the convention, and her political part had been sufficiently 
remarkable to make her feel that she was bound, in honour, to accept 
its responsibility, even though that responsibility should be death on 
a scaffold. It was this sense of duty that rendered her unwilling to 
leave Paris, as she might have done, before the 31st of May. Con- 
scious of her own innocence, and of the purity of her motives, she 
disdained a flight unworthy alike of her character and of her destiny. 
The success of the Jacobins on the 31st of May confirmed her in 
this resolve. The friend at whose house Roland had taken refuge 
could not let her share his asylum ; she seized this as a pretence, 
and returned home to await her fate. Overcome with fatigue, she was 
yielding to sleep, when her servant entered her room and informed 
her that several armed men requested to see her. This was no more 
than she had expected. The promptness with which they made use 
of their power snowed her how deep and unrelenting was the hatred 
of her enemies. She rose, dressed herself carefully, and appeared 
before her visiters; they showed her a warrant for her apprehen- 
sion, in which the motives of her arrest were not even set forth. 
She knew the document to be illegal, but perceiving the uselessness 
of resistance, calmly submitted. She had already provided for the 
safety of her daughter, and all she now asked for was leisure to 
make her own preparations. She did so with perfect calmness, not- 
withstanding the crowd of individuals of every sort who filled the 
apartment. At seven in the morning everything was in readiness to 
take her to prison and she bade her daughter and the weeping ser- 
vants a last farewell ; gently exhorting them to resignation. 

The men who arrested her beheld with surprise the marks of 
affection bestowed on a woman whom the calumnies of Marat had 
taught them to consider with abhorrence. A hackney-coach waited 
below to convey her to the Abbaye ; she walked towards it between 
two rows of armed men, who followed the coach when she had 
entered it. "To the guillotine!" cried a few women in the crowd. 
" Shall w T e draw down the blinds?" asked one of the commissioners. 
Madame Roland calmly refused : " Innocence," she said, " has no 
need to put on the aspect of crime." " You have more strength of 
mind than most men," observed the commissioner ; " and you will 
wait patiently for justice!" "Justice!" she passionately exclaimed; 
" were justice done to me, I should not be here to-day : but I shall 
walk as calmly to the scaffold as. I now proceed to prison." 

That prison was reached ere long. Was this then the goal of 
those high dreams and aspirations towards freedom, which had 
haunted her mind even from the days of her childhood ? 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 281 



CHAPTER V. 

Charlotte Corday. 

Amongst the women of the French Revolution, there is one who 
stands essentially apart: a solitary episode of the eventful story. 
She appears for a moment, performs a deed, — heroic as to the in- 
tention, criminal as to the means, — and disappears for ever: lost in 
the shadow of time — an unfathomed mystery. 

And it is, perhaps, this very mystery that has invested with so 
much interest the name of one known by a single deed; which, 
though intended by her to deliver her country, changed little in its 
destinies. To admire her entirely is impossible; to condemn her is 
equally difficult. No one can read her history without feeling that, 
to judge her absolutely, lies not in the province of man. Beautiful, 
pure, gentle, and a murderess, she attracts and repels us in almost 
equal degrees; like all those beings whose nature is inexplicable and 
strange, according to the ordinary standard of humanity. Although 
it is generally acknowledged that she did not exercise over contem- 
porary events that repressing power for which she sacrificed her life, 
it is felt, nevertheless, that no history of the times in which she lived, 
is complete without her name; and to her brief and tragic history an 
eloquent modern historian* has devoted some of his most impressive 
pages. This would be a sufficient authority for introducing her 
here, were not, moreover, her name as closely linked with the his- 
tory of the Girondists as that of Madame Roland. If one was the 
chief of that ill-fated party, the other undertook to be their avenger. 

The 31st of May was the signal of the fall and dispersion of the 
Girondists. Some, like Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, and their friends, 
retired to the provinces; which they endeavoured to rouse for one 
last struggle. Others, like Madame Roland and the twenty-two, 
prepared themselves in their silent prison solitude for death and the 
scaffold. The name of the Girondists now became a sound as pro- 
scribed as that of Royalist had been during their brief sway. No 
voice gifted with power was raised throughout the republic in favour 
of the men by whom, in the midst of such enthusiastic acclamations, 
that republic had been founded. France was rapidly sinking into 
that state of silent apathy which foreboded the Reign of Terror: 
discouraged by their experience of the past, men lost their faith in 
humanity, and selfishly despaired of the future. A maiden's heroic 

* Lamartine. 

24* 



282 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

spirit alone conceived the daring project of saving those who had so 
long and so nobly striven for freedom; or, if this might not be, of 
avenging their fall, and striking terror into the hearts of their foes, 
by a deed of solemn immolation, worthy of the stern sacrifices of 
paganism, offered up of yore on the blood-stained shrines of the god- 
dess Nemesis. 

The maiden was Marie-Anne Charlotte of Corday and of Armont, 
one of the last descendants of a noble though impoverished Norman 
family, which counted amongst its near relatives, Fontenelle, the 
wit and philosopher of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and 
amongst its ancestors, the father of the great tragic poet of France, 
Pierre Corneille. 

Her father, Jacques of Corday and of Armont, was a younger son 
of this noble line. He was, however, poorer than many of the pea- 
sants amongst whom he lived, cultivating with his own hands his 
narrow inheritance. He married in early life a lady of gentle blood, 
but as poor as himself. They had five children and a noble name 
to support, in a vain show of dignity, on their insufficient income. 
It thus happened that Charlotte, their fourth child and second daugh- 
ter, was born in a thatched dwelling, in the village of Saint-Saturnin 
des Lignerets; and that in the register of the parish church where 
she was baptized, on the 28th of July, 1768, the day after her birth, 
she is described as "born in lawful wedlock of Jacques Francois of 
Corday, esquire, sieur of Armont, and of the noble dame Marie 
Charlotte-Jacqueline, of Gauthier des Authieux, his wife." It was 
under these difficult circumstances, which embittered his temper, 
and often caused him to inveigh in energetic terms against the in- 
justice of the law of primogeniture, that M. d'Armont reared his 
family. As soon as they were of age, his sons entered the army; 
one of his daughters died young; and he became a widower when 
the other two were emerging from childhood into youth. They re- 
mained for some time with their father, but at length entered the 
Abbaye aux Dames, in the neighbouring town of Caen. 

The greatest portion of the youth of Charlotte Corday — to give 
her the name by which she is generally known — was spent in the 
calm obscurity of her convent solitude. Many high visions, many 
burning dreams and lofty aspirations, already haunted her imagi- 
native and enthusiastic mind, as she slowly paced the silent cloisters, 
or rested, lost in thought, beneath the shadow of the ancient elms. 
It is said that, like Madame Roland, she contemplated secluding her- 
self for ever from the world in her monastic retreat ; but, affected 
by the scepticism of the age, which penetrated even beyond convent 
walls, she gave up this project. From these early religious feelings, 
Charlotte derived, however, the calm devotedness which characterized 
her brief career: for though self-sacrifice may not be the exclusive 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 283 

attribute of Christianity, it cannot be denied that the deep humility 
by which it is accompanied — a feeling almost unknown to the an- 
cients — is in itself the very spirit of Christ. The peaceful and 
solemn shadow of the old cloister favoured the mild seriousness of 
Charlotte's character. Within the precincts of her sacred retreat 
she grew up in grave and serene loveliness, a being fit for the 
gentlest duties of woman's household life, or for one of those austere 
and fearless deeds which lead to the scaffold and give martyrdom in 
a holy cause. 

The scepticism that prevailed for the last few years preceding the 
Revolution, was not the sensual atheism which had disgraced the 
eighteenth century so long. The faith in a first and eternal cause, 
in the sacredness of human rights and the holiness of duty, was 
firmly held by many noble spirits, who hailed with enthusiasm the 
first dawn of democracy. This faith was blended, in the soul of 
Charlotte Corday, with a passionate admiration of antiquity. All 
the austerity and republican enthusiasm of her illustrious ancestor, 
Pierre Corneille, seemed to have come down to his young descen- 
dant. Even Rousseau and Raynal, the apostles of democracy, had 
no pages that could absorb her so deeply as those of ancient history, 
with its stirring deeds and immortal recollections. Often, like Manon 
Phlipon in the recess of her father's workshop, might Charlotte Cor- 
day be seen, in her convent cell, thoughtfully bending over an open 
volume of Plutarch; that powerful and eloquent historian of all 
heroic sacrifices. 

When the Abbaye aux Dames was closed, in consequence of the 
Revolution, Charlotte was in her twentieth year, in the prime of life 
and of her wonderful beauty ; and never, perhaps, did a vision of 
more dazzling loveliness, step forth from beneath the dark convent 
portal into the light of the free and open world. She was rather 
tall, but admirably proportioned, with a figure full of native grace 
and dignity ; her hands, arms, and shoulders, were models of pure 
sculptural beauty. An expression of singular gentleness and sere- 
nity characterized her fair, oval countenance and regular features. 
Her open forehead, dark and well-arched ej^ebrows, and eyes of a 
gray so deep that it was often mistaken for blue, added to her natu- 
rally grave and meditative appearance ; her nose was straight and 
well formed, her mouth serious but exquisitely beautiful. Like most 
of the women of the Norman race, she had a complexion of trans- 
parent purity; enhanced by the rich brown hair which fell in thick 
curls around her neck, according to the fashion of the period. A 
simple seventy characterized her dress of sombre hue, and the low 
and becoming lace cap which she habitually wore is still known by 
her name in France. Her whole aspect was fraught with so much 
modest grace and dignity, that, notwithstanding her youth, the first 



284 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

feeling she invariably inspired was one of respect ; blended with in- 
voluntary admiration, for a being of such pure and touching love- 
liness. 

On leaving the convent in which she had been educated, Charlotte 
Corday went to reside with her aunt, Madame Coutellier de Brette- 
ville Gouville; an old royalist lady, who inhabited an ancient-look- 
ing house in one of the principal streets of Caen. There the young 
girl, who had inherited a little property, spent several years, chiefly 
engaged in watching the progress of the Revolution. The feelings 
of her father were similarly engrossed : he wrote several pamphlets 
in favour of the revolutionary principles ; and one in which he 
attacked the right of primogeniture. His republican tendencies con- 
firmed Charlotte in her opinions ; but of the deep, overpowering 
strength which those opinions acquired in her soul, during the long 
hours she daily devoted to meditation, no one ever knew, until a 
stern and fearful deed — more stern and fearful in one so gentle — 
had revealed it to all France. A silent reserve characterized this 
epoch of Charlotte Corday's life : her enthusiasm was not external, 
but inward : she listened to the discussions which were carried on 
around her without taking a part in them herself. She seemed to 
feel instinctively that great thoughts are always better nursed in the 
heart's solitude: that they can only lose their native depth and in- 
tensity by being revealed too freely before the indifferent gaze of the 
world. Those with whom she then occasionally conversed took 
little heed of the substance of her discourse, and could remember 
nothing of it when she afterwards became celebrated ; but all recol- 
lected well her voice, and spoke with strange enthusiasm of its pure, 
silvery sound. Like Madame Roland, whom she resembled in so 
many respects, Charlotte possessed this rare and great attraction ; 
and there was something so touching in her youthful and almost 
childlike utterance of heroic thoughts, that it affected even to tears 
those who heard her, on her trial, calmly defending herself from the 
infamous accusations of her judges, and glorying, with the same low, 
sweet tones, in the deadly deed which had brought her before them. 

The fall of the Girondists, on the 31st of May, first suggested to 
Charlotte Corday the possibility of giving an active shape to her 
hitherto passive feelings. She watched with intense, though still 
silent, interest the progress of events, concealing her secret indigna- 
tion and thoughts of vengeance under her habitually calm aspect. 
Those feelings were heightened in her soul by the presence of the 
fugitive Girondists, who had found a refuge in Caen, and were urging 
the Normans to raise an army to march on Paris. She found a 
pretence to call upon Barbaroux, then with his friends at the In- 
tendance. She came twice, accompanied by an old servant, and 
protected by her own modest dignity. Pethion saw her in the hall, 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 285 

where she was waiting for the handsome Girondist, and observed, 
with a smile, " So the beautiful aristocrat is come to see republicans." 
" Citizen Pethion," she replied, " you now judge me without know- 
ing me, but a time will come when you shall learn who I am." 
With Barbaroux, Charlotte chiefly conversed of the imprisoned 
Girondists ; of Madame Roland and Marat. The name of this man 
had long haunted her with a mingled feeling of dread and horror. 
To Marat she ascribed the proscription of the Girondists, the woes 
of the Republic, and on him she resolved to avenge her ill-fated 
country. Charlotte was not aware that Marat was but the tool of 
Danton and Robespierre. " If such actions could be counselled," 
afterwards said Barbaroux, " it is not Marat whom we would have 
advised her to strike." 

Whilst this deadly thought was daily strengthening itself in 
Charlotte's mind, she received several offers of marriage. She de- 
clined them, on the plea of wishing to remain free : but strange 
indeed must have seemed to her, at that moment, those proposals of 
earthly love. One of those whom her beauty had enamoured, M. 
de Franquelin, a young volunteer in the cause of the Girondists, 
died of grief on learning her fate; his last request was, that her por- 
trait, and a few letters he had formerly received from her, might be 
buried with him in his grave. 

For several days after her last interview with Barbaroux, Char- 
lotte brooded silently over her great thought, often meditating on the 
history of Judith. Her aunt subsequently remembered that, on 
entering her room one morning, she found an old Bible open on her 
bed: the verse in which it is recorded that " the Lord had gifted 
Judith with a special beauty and fairness," for the deliverance of 
Israel, was underlined with a pencil. ' 

On another occasion Madame de Bretteville found her niece weep- 
ing alone; she inquired into the cause of her tears. " They flow," 
replied Charlotte, " for the misfortunes of my country." Heroic 
and devoted as she was, she then also wept, perchance, over her 
own youth and beauty, so soon to be sacrificed for ever. No per- 
sonal considerations altered her resolve ; she procured a passport, 
provided herself with money, and paid a farewell visit to her father, 
to inform him that, considering the unsettled condition of France, 
she thought it best to retire to England. He approved of her in- 
tention, and bade her adieu. On returning to Caen, Charlotte told 
the same tale to Madame de Bretteville, left a secret provision for an 
old nurse, and distributed the little property she possessed amongst 
her friends. 

It was on the morning of the 9th of July, 1793, that she left the 
house of her aunt, without trusting herself with a last farewell. Her 
most earnest wish was, when her deed should have been accom- 



286 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

plished, to perish, wholly unknown, by the hands of an infuriated 
multitude. The woman who could contemplate such a fate, and 
calmly devote herself to it, without one selfish thought of future 
renown, had indeed the heroic soul of a martyr. 

Her journey to Paris was marked by no other event than the 
unwelcome attentions of some Jacobins with whom she travelled. 
One of them, struck by her modest and gentle beauty, made her a 
very serious proposal of marriage: she playfully evaded his request, 
but promised that he should learn who and what she was at some 
future period. On entering Paris she proceeded immediately to the 
Hotel de la Providence, Rue des Vieux Augustins, not far from 
Marat's dwelling. Here she rested for two days, before calling on 
her intended victim. Nothing can mark more forcibly the singular 
calmness of her mind : she felt no hurry to accomplish the deed for 
which she had journeyed so far, and over which she had meditated 
so deeply : her soul remained serene and undaunted to the last. 
The room which she occupied, and which has often been pointed out 
to inquiring strangers, was a dark and wretched attic, into which 
light scarcely ever penetrated. There she read again the volume 
of Plutarch she had brought with her, — unwilling to part from her 
favourite author, even in her last hours, — and probably composed 
that energetic address to the people which was found upon her after 
her apprehension. One of the first acts of Charlotte was to call on 
the Girondist, Duperret, for whom she was provided with a letter 
from Barbaroux, relative to the supposed business she had in Paris: 
her real motive was to learn how she could see Marat. She had 
first intended to strike him in the Champ de Mars, on the 14th of 
July, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, when a great and 
imposing ceremony was to take place. The festival being delayed, 
she resolved to seek him in the convention, and immolate him on the 
very summit of the mountain ; but Marat was too ill to attend the 
meetings of the National Assembly : this Charlotte learned from 
Duperret. She resolved, nevertheless, to go to the convention, in 
order to fortify herself in her resolve. Mingling with the horde of 
Jacobins who crowded the galleries, she watched with deep atten- 
tion the scene below. Saint Just was then urging the convention 
to proscribe Lanjuinais, the heroic defender of the Girondists. A 
young foreigner, a friend of Lanjuinais,- and who stood at a short 
distance from Charlotte, noticed the expression of stern indignation 
which gathered over her features; until, like one overpowered by 
her feelings, and apprehensive of displaying them too openly, she 
abruptly left the place. Struck with her whole appearance, he fol- 
lowed her out ; a sudden shower of rain, which compelled them to 
seek shelter under the same archway, afforded him an opportunity 
of entering into conversation with her. When she learned that he 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 287 

was a friend of Lanjuinais, she waived her reserve, and questioned 
him with much interest concerning Madame Roland and the Giron- 
dists. She also asked him about Marat, with whom she said she 
had business. " Marat is ill ; it would be better for you to apply to 
the public accuser, Fouquier Tinville," said the stranger. " I do not 
want him now, but I may have to deal with him yet," she signifi- 
cantly replied. 

Perceiving that the rain did not cease, she requested her compa- 
nion to procure her a conveyance; he complied ; and, before parting 
from her, begged to be favoured with her name. She refused ; 
adding, however, " You will know it before long." With Italian 
courtesv, he kissed her hand as he assisted her into the fiacre. She 
smiled, and bade him farewell. 

Charlotte perceived that to call on -Marat was the only means by 
which she might accomplish her purpose. She did so on the morn- 
ing of the 13th of July, having first purchased a knife in the Palais 
Royal, and written him a note, in which she requested an interview. 
She was refused admittance. She then wrote him a second note, 
more pressing than the first, and in which she represented herself as 
persecuted for the cause of freedom. Without waiting to see what 
effect this note might produce, she called again at half-past seven 
the same evening. 

Marat then resided in the Rue des Cordeliers, in a gloomy-looking 
house, which has since been demolished. His constant fears of 
assassination were shared by those around him ; the porter, seeing a 
strange woman pass by his lodge without pausing to make any 
inquiry, ran out and called her back. She did not heed his remon- 
strance, but swiftly ascended the old stone staircase, until she had 
reached the door of Marat's apartment. It was cautiously opened 
by Albertine, a woman with whom Marat cohabited, and who passed 
for his wife. Recognising the same young and handsome girl who 
had already called on her husband, and animated, perhaps, by a 
feeling of jealous mistrust, Albertine refused to admit her ; Charlotte 
insisted with great earnestness. The sound of their altercation 
reached Marat ; he immediately ordered his wife to admit the 
stranger, whom he recognised as the author of the two letters he 
had received in the course of the day. Albertine obeyed reluctantly ; 
she allowed Charlotte to enter; and, after crossing with her an 
antechamber, where she had been occupied with a man named Lau- 
rent Basse in folding some numbers of the " Ami du People," she 
ushered her through two other rooms, until they came to a narrow 
closet where Marat was then in a bath. He gave a look at Charlotte, 
and ordered his wife to leave them ajone : she complied, but allowed 
the door of the closet to remain half open, and kept within call. 

According to his usual custom, Marat wore a soiled handkerchief 



288 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

bound round his head, increasing his natural hideousness. A coarse 
covering was thrown across the bath ; a board, likewise placed 
transversely, supported his papers. Laying down his pen, he asked 
Charlotte the purport of her visit. The closet was so narrow that 
she touched the bath near which she stood. She gazed on him with 
ill-disguised horror and disgust, but answered, as composedly as she 
could, that she had come from Caen, in order to give him correct 
intelligence concerning the proceedings of the Girondists there. He 
listened, questioned her eagerly, wrote down the name of the Giron- 
dists, then added, with a smile of triumph : " Before a week they 
shall have perished on the guillotine." " These words," afterwards 
said Charlotte, " sealed his fate." Drawing from beneath the hand- 
kerchief which covered her bosom the knife she had kept there all 
along, she plunged it to the hilt in Marat's heart. He gave one loud 
expiring cry for help, and sank back dead, in the bath. By an in- 
stinctive impulse, Charlotte had instantly drawn out the knife from 
the breast of her victim, but she did not strike again ; casting it down 
at his feet, she left the closet, and sat down in the neighbouring 
room, thoughtfully passing her hand across her brow : her task was 
done. 

The wife of Marat had rushed to his aid on hearing his cry for 
help. Laurent Basse, seeing that all was over, turned round 
towards Charlotte, and, with a blow of a chair, felted her to the 
floor ; whilst the infuriated Albertine trampled her under her feet. 
The tumult aroused the other tenants of the house; the alarm 
spread, and a crowd gathered in the apartment, who learned with 
stupor that Marat, the Friend of the People, had been murdered. 
Deeper still was their wonder when they gazed on the murderess. 
She stood there before them with still disordered garments, and her 
dishevelled hair, loosely bound by a broad green riband falling 
around her; but so calm, so serenely lovely, that those who most 
abhorred her crime gazed on her with involuntary admiration. 
" Was she then so beautiful?" was the question addressed, many 
years afterwards, to an old man, one of the few remaining witnesses 
of this scene. " Beautiful !" he echoed, enthusiastically ; adding, 
with the eternal regrets of old age : " Ay, there are none such 
now !" 

The commissary of police began his interrogatory in the saloon 
of Marat's apartment. She told him her name, how long she had 
been in Paris, confessed her crime, and recognised the knife with 
which it had been perpetrated. The sheath was found in her pocket, 
with a thimble, some thread, money, and her watch. 

"What was your motive in assassinating Marat?" asked the 
commissary. 

" To prevent a civil war," she answered. 

" Who are your accomplices ?" 



CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 289 

" I have none." 

She was ordered to be transferred to the Abbaye, the nearest 
prison. An immense and infuriated crowd had gathered around the 
door of Marat's house ; one of the witnesses perceived that she 
would have liked to be delivered to this maddened multitude, and 
thus perish at once. She was not saved from their hands without 
difficulty ; her courage failed her at the sight of the peril she ran, 
and she fainted away on being conveyed to the fiacre. On reaching 
the Abbaye, she was questioned until midnight by Chabot and 
Drouet, two Jacobin members of the convention. She answered 
their interrogatories with singular firmness ; observing, in con- 
clusion : " I have done my task, let others do theirs." Chabot 
threatened her with the scaffold ; she answered him with a smile of 
disdain. Her behaviour until the 17th, the day of her trial, was 
marked by the same firmess. She wrote to Barbaroux a charming 
letter, full of graceful wit and heroic feeling. Her playfulness never 
degenerated into levity : like that of the illustrious Thomas More, it 
was the serenity of a mind whom death had no power to daunt. 
Speaking of her action, she observes, "I considered that so many 
brave men need not come to Paris for the head of one man. He 
deserved not so much honour: the hand of a woman was enough 
.... I have never hated but one being, and him with what intensity 
I have sufficiently shown ; but there are a thousand whom I love 
still more than I hated him I confess that I employed a per- 
fidious artifice in order that he might receive me. In leaving Caen, 
I thought to sacrifice him on the pinnacle of ' the mountain,' but 
he no longer went to it. In Paris they cannot understand how a 
useless woman, whose longest life could hare been of no good, 

could sacrifice herself to save her country May peace be as 

soon established as I desire! A great criminal has been laid low 
.... the happiness of my country makes mine. A lively imagi- 
nation and a feeling heart promise but a stormy life ; I beseech those 
who might regret me to consider this : they will then rejoice at my 
fate." A tenderer tone marks the brief letter she addressed to her 
father on the eve of her trial and death : " Forgive me, my dear 
father," she observed, " for having disposed of my existence without 
your permission. I have avenged many innocent victims. I have 
warded away many disasters. The people, undeceived, will one 
day rejoice at being delivered from a tyrant. If I endeavoured to 
persuade you that I was going to England, it was because I hoped 
to remain unknown : I recognised that this was impossible. I hope 
you will not be subjected to annoyance : you have at least defenders 
at Caen ; I have chosen Gustave Doulcet de Pontecoulant for mine : 
it is a mere matter of form. Such a deed allows of no defence. 
Farewell, my dear father. I beseech of you to forget me ; or, ra- 

25 



290 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ther, to rejoice at my fate. I die for a good cause. I embrace my 
sister, whom I love with my whole heart. Do not forget the line of 
Corneille : 

4 Le crime faite la honte, et non pas l'echafaud.' 

To-morrow at eight I am to be tried." 

On the morning of the 17th, she was led before her judges. She 
was dressed with care, and had never looked more lovely. Her 
bearing was so imposing and dignified, that the spectators and the 
judges seemed to stand arraigned before her. She interrupted the 
first witness, by declaring that it was she who had killed Marat. 
"Who inspired you with so much hatred against him]" asked the 
President. 

" I needed not the hatred of others, I had enough of my own," 
she energetically replied ; " besides, we do not execute well that 
which we have not ourselves conceived." 

" What, then, did you hate in Marat?" 

" His crimes." 

" Do you think that you have assassinated all the Marats?" 

" No ; but now that he is dead, the rest may fear." 

She answered other questions with equal firmness and laconism. 
Her project, she declared, had been formed since the 31st of May. 
" She had killed one man to save a hundred thousand. She was a 
republican long before the Revolution, and had never failed in 
energy." 

" What do you understand by energy?" asked the President. 

"That feeling," she replied, "which induces us to cast aside 
selfish considerations, and sacrifice ourselves for our country." 

Fouquier Tinville here observed, alluding to the sure blow she 
had given, that she must be well practised in crime. " The mon- 
ster takes me for an assassin !" she exclaimed, in a tone thrilling with 
indignation. This closed the debates, and her defender rose. It 
was not Doulcet de Pontecoulant — who had not received her letter — 
but Chauveau de la Garde, chosen by the President. Charlotte gave 
him an anxious look, as though she feared he might seek to save 
her at the expense of honour. He spoke, and she perceived that her 
apprehensions were unfounded. Without excusing her crime or at- 
tributing it to insanity, he pleaded for the fervour of her conviction ; 
which he had the courage to call sublime. The appeal proved un- 
availing. Charlotte Corday was condemned. Without deigning to 
answer the President, who asked her if she had aught to object to 
the penalty of death being carried out against her, she rose, and 
walking up to her defender, thanked him gracefully. " These gentle- 
men," said she, pointing to the judges, " have just informed me that 



CHARLOTTE CORD AY. 291 

the whole of my property is confiscated. I owe something in the 
prison : as a proof of my friendship and esteem, I request you to pay 
this little debt." 

On returning to the conciergerie, she found an artist, named 
Hauer, waiting for her, to finish her portrait, which he had begun at 
the Tribunal. They conversed freely together, until the executioner, 
carrying the red chemise destined for assassins, and the scissors 
with which he was to cut her hair off, made his appearance. " What, 
so soon !" exclaimed Charlotte Corday, slightly turning pale; but 
rallying her courage, she resumed her composure, and presented a 
lock of her hair to M. Hauer, as the only reward in her power to 
offer. A priest came to offer her his ministry. She thanked him 
and the persons by whom he had been sent, but declined his spiritual 
aid. The executioner cut her hair, bound her hands, and threw the 
red chemise over her. M. Hauer was struck with the almost un- 
earthly loveliness which the crimson hue of this garment imparted to 
the ill-fated maiden. " This toilet of death, though performed by 
rude hands, leads to immortality," said Charlotte, with a smile. 

A heavy storm broke forth as the car of the condemned left the 
conciergerie for the Place de la Revolution. An immense crowd 
lined every street through which Charlotte Corday passed. Hoot- 
ings and execrations at first rose on her path ; but as her pure and 
serene beauty dawned on the multitude, as the exquisite loveliness of 
her countenance and the sculptural beauty of her figure became 
more fully revealed, pity and admiration superseded every other 
feeling. Her bearing was so admirably calm and dignified, as to 
rouse sympathy in the breasts of those who detested not only her 
crime, but the cause for which it had been committed. Many men 
of every party took off their hats and bowed as the cart passed be- 
fore them. Amongst those who waited its approach, was a young 
German, named Adam Luz, who stood at the entrance of the Rue 
Sainte Honore, and followed Charlotte to the scaffold. He gazed 
on the lovely and heroic maiden with all the enthusiasm of his 
imaginative race. A love, unexampled perhaps in the history of 
the human heart, took possession of his soul. Not one wandering 
look of " those beautiful eyes, which revealed a soul as intrepid as 
it was tender," escaped him. Every earthly grace so soon to pe- 
rish in death, every trace of the lofty and immortal spirit, filled him 
with bitter and intoxicating emotions unknown till then. " To die 
for her ; to be struck by the same hand ; to feel in death the same 
cold axe which had severed the angelic head of Charlotte ; to be 
united to her in heroism, freedom, love, and death, was now the 
only hope and desire of his heart." 

Unconscious of the passionate love she had awakened, Charlotte 
now stood near the guillotine. She turned pale on first beholding 



292 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

it, but soon resumed her serenity. A deep blush suffused her face 
when the executioner removed the handkerchief that covered her 
neck and shoulders, but she calmly laid her head upon the block. 
The executioner touched a spring, and the axe came down. One 
of Samson's assistants immediately stepped forward, and holding 
up the lifeless head to the gaze of the crowd, struck it on either 
cheek. The brutal act only excited a feeling of horror ; and it is 
said that — as though even in death her indignant spirit protested 
against this outrage — an angry and crimson flush passed over the 
features of Charlotte Corday. 

A few days after her execution, Adam Luz published a pamphlet, 
in which he enthusiastically praised her deed, and proposed that a 
statue with the inscription, " Greater than Brutus," should be 
erected to her memory on the spot where she had perished. He 
was arrested and thrown into prison. On entering the Abbaye, he 
passionately exclaimed, " I am going to die for her !" His wish 
was fulfilled ere long. 

Strange feverish times were those which could rouse a gentle and 
lovely maiden to avenge freedom by such a deadly deed ; which 
could waken in a human heart a love whose thoughts were not of 
life or earthly bliss, but of the grave and the scaffold. Let the 
times, then, explain those natures, where so much evil and heroism 
are blended that man cannot mark the limits between both. What- 
ever judgment may be passed upon her, the character of Charlotte 
Corday was certainly not cast in an ordinary mould. It is a striking 
and noble trait, that to the last she did not repent : never was error 
more sincere. If she could have repented, she would never have 
become guilty. 

Her deed created an extraordinary impression throughout France. 
On hearing of it, a beautiful royalist lady fell down on her knees 
and invoked " Saint Charlotte Corday." The republican Madame 
Roland calls her a heroine worthy of a better age. The poet, 
Andre Chenier — who, before a year had elapsed, followed her on 
the scaffold — sang her heroism in a soul-stirring strain. 
• The political influence of that deed may be estimated by the 
exclamation of Vergniaud : " She kills us, but she teaches us how 
to die !" It was so. The assassination of Marat exasperated all his 
fanatic partisans against the Girondists. Almost divine honours 
were paid to his memory ; forms of prayer were addressed to him ; 
altars were erected to his honour, and numberless victims sent to 
the scaffold as a peace-offering to his manes. On the wreck of his 
popularity rose the far more dangerous power of Robespierre: a 
new impulse was given to the Reign of Terror. Such was the 
11 peace" which the erring and heroic Charlotte Corday won for 
France. 



THE ROYAL PRISONERS. 293 



CHAPTER VI. 

Marie-Antoinette's Captivity , Trial, and Death. 

Marie-Antoinette had been incarcerated ten months, when 
Madame Roland was thrown into prison. The queen and the re- 
publican inspirer of the Gironde had met a like fate. The scaffold, 
which awaited them both, was to complete the resemblance between 
their destinies. 

Well known as are the details of the captivity of the royal family in 
the Temple, they cannot be omitted here. We have seen the queen 
in her prosperity, it is fitting to behold her in misfortune. In reading 
once more that sad history, it will perhaps be found easier to under- 
stand how, notwithstanding her errors, Marie-Antoinette has left a 
name to which, through all the changes of political creeds, pity and 
admiration will ever cling. 

The Temple, to which the royal family were transferred after the 
10th of August, was an old, gloomy building, erected and inhabited 
by the Knights-Templar of the middle ages. It stood in a walled 
enclosure, of which the gates were shut every night. Debtors 
found a safe refuge in this place, which their creditors had no power 
to invade; but their presence, and the narrow streets and low dwell- 
ings in which they lived, rendered this little neighbourhood very 
mean and unhealthy. " The tower," observes Clery, in his narra- 
tive, " is about a hundred and fifty feet high, and consists of four 
stories ; to this place it was that Louis and his unfortunate family- 
were removed. The Bastille presented nothing of equal horror : 
around the foot of the tower was dug a wide deep ditch, and the part 
of the garden reserved for the walk of the august prisoners was en- 
closed by an immensely high wall ; the doors, which were made of 
iron, were so low and so narrow, that it was necessary to bend 
double and move sideways to pass the threshold ; scarcely any light 
was suffered to enter through the windows, from the slanting; screens 
which were placed over them, and the thick iron bars with which 
they were secured." 

Louis XVI. accepted this sudden change of fortune with his usual 
resignation ; his pious sister as a trial sent by Heaven ; Marie- 
Antoinette, with subdued and silent indignation. The first few days 
of their captivity were not, however, the most painful the royal pri- 
soners had to pass. Hope had not deserted them yet : the success 

25* 



294 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

of the foreign armies would have delivered them. In that success 
they believed, not without some show of reason ; for the untaught 
bravery of French plebeians had not yet* been tested on the field of 
battle. The first deep grief of Marie-Antoinette was her separa- 
tion from the Princess of Lamballe ; who was torn from her arms 
at dead of night, and transferred to La Force, in order to be mur- 
dered a few days later by the Septembriseurs. The proclamation 
of the Republic on the 21st of September showed the king and his 
family that, from France at least, they had no more to hope : their 
part was over there for ever. The Princess of Lamballe, and the 
few devoted attendants who had followed the royal family to the 
temple, were replaced by a rude man named Tison and his wife. 
This woman, whose mind was in an unsettled state, treated the pri- 
soners with alternate harshness and pity : she sometimes professed 
herself devoted to the queen, and offered to serve her ; until, alarmed 
for her own safety, she suddenly betrayed and accused her. Simon, 
a shoemaker, and Roucher, a saddler, shared the office of gaoler, 
and took a cruel and cowardly pleasure in tormenting their captives. 
They menaced and insulted the king, addressed the princesses with 
familiarity and arrogance, compelled them to listen to their disgust- 
ing and threatening language, and repeatedly tortured them by 
throwing out intimations that Louis XVI. should ere long be sepa- 
rated from them, in order that they might behold their tears, and 
receive their entreaties. 

These menaces were once carried into execution. The king was 
abruptly separated from his family ; but the despair of the queen 
was so overwhelming and so deep, her threats of allowing herself to 
die of hunger, if this barbarous separation were persisted in, so ve- 
hement, as to soften even Simon, and make him shed tears. Not- 
withstanding the order of the Commune to the contrary, he assumed 
the responsibility of allowing Louis XVI. to take his meals with his 
family : this favour was, fortunately, not revoked. Another in- 
dulgence, almost as great, was that the faithful Clery was allowed to 
remain with the king: he proved both a servant and a friend. The 
life of the royal family had all the monotony without the seclusion 
of captivity. TA atched on every side, they could scarcely hold any 
real communication with one another. The king rose early, and 
prayed and read until nine, at which time he met his family at break- 
fast. When this meal was over, Clery combed out the hair of the 
princesses, whilst Louis instructed his son, chiefly in geography. At 
twelve, the whole family went down to the dreary garden which lay 
at the foot of their prison. They were followed, even there, by 
insults, which changed these hours of freedom into hours of punish- 
ment. The distant windows which overlooked the Temple were, 
however, often thronged with sympathizing friends, whose looks and 



THE ROYAL PRISONERS. 295 

gestures of pity and love cheered the royal captives. At two, they 
went up to dinner ; this meal was embittered by the presence of their 
gaolers, who checked everything like freedom and confidence. Not- 
withstanding the severity with which they were watched, the prison- 
ers, however, found means to hold some intercourse with their friends, 
and even to learn the news. Paid news-venders passed under the 
windows of the Temple, and, whilst appearing to hawk their papers, 
contrived to let the king know their contents. The princesses 
worked and read during the afternoon. "In the evening," relates 
Clery, " the family sat round a table, whilst the queen read to them 
from books of history, or other instructive works. Often, and un- 
expectedly, she met with narratives of events that bore too great a 
resemblance to their fate. These would give birth to the most me- 
lancholy reflections : Madame Elizabeth was then obliged to take up 
the book. The reading generally continued until eight, when I gave 
the dauphin his supper : the queen always heard him say his 
prayers." 

The gaolers manifested more severity towards their prisoners as 
the days of their captivity increased. The princesses were com- 
pelled to mend their own clothes, those of the king and of the chil- 
dren, to sweep the floors of their prison, and perform many menial 
offices. But it was chiefly the ceaseless insults and annoyances to 
which they were subjected that embittered their lot. These outrages, 
were, however, seldom directed to the queen. Her imposing dignity 
awed even Roucher and Simon, if not into respect, at least into 
silence. Their gross provocations were addressed to the king and 
his gentle sister, who endured everything with heroic patience. 
Calmly resigned to her fate, Madame Elizabeth might often be seen 
kneeling in prayer at the foot of her bed. She would remain there 
for hours in the same attitude, serene and beautiful, like a being of 
another and a better world. 

This pious resignation formed no part of the character of Marie- 
Antoinette; in her it would have been unnatural. She could not 
and would not forget that she had been a queen ; that she was now 
a captive ; that the fate of Charles the First awaited her husband : 
what fate awaited her, her children, and the devoted sister who shared 
their prison, she knew not. In this agony she was sustained by 
pride ; for the love she bore to those around her could only bow her 
down with despair and grief: it was for them that she suffered, and 
over their destiny that she wept and brooded during the live-long 
nights of her captivity : nights seldom refreshed by sleep. Love 
had no power to soothe the sorrows it had caused, but pride could 
enable her to bear them, if not with passive patience, at least with 
dignity. Such pride was not all to be condemned ; for what was it 
but the last protest of a heroic soul against fate and man's injustice? 



296 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

The fascination which Marie-Antoinette had so long exercised on 
all those who approached her, did not vanish with rank and power. 
Her fading loveliness, faded by grief more than by years, had an 
eloquence beyond the freshness of youthful beauty. An injured 
queen, and a suffering wife and mother, commanded both respect 
and sympathy. She inspired still deeper feelings in two men named 
Toulan and Lepitre. They devoted themselves to her cause, planned 
escapes for the royal family, favoured their correspondence with 
their friends, and did all that the most passionate enthusiasm could 
inspire. This lasted for a considerable length of time, but the wife 
of Tison at length betrayed them, and Toulan was taken and exe- 
cuted. Oppressed with remorse, the wretched woman fell danger- 
ously ill. The queen and Madame Elizabeth, touched at the excess 
of her grief, not only forgave her, but attended her during her ill- 
ness. The hopes which the devotedness of Toulan — and his was not 
a solitary instance — had inspired for a moment, vanished in the heart 
of Marie-Antoinette, as the trial of her husband came on. One 
thought alone now absorbed, haunted her mind. The serene resig- 
nation of the king, which compelled her to subdue the expression of 
her grief, added to its bitterness. Of a passionate and vehement 
nature, she was not made for an ever-silent agony. She sought not, 
like her husband, to check her sorrow: she only had power over its 
external tokens, and this inward and ceaseless struggle added to the 
fever which consumed her existence. 

As long as the trial lasted, the royal family were forbidden to see. 
the king ; they would have learned none of the details of the trial 
itself, but for the zeal and ingenious stratagems of Clery: through 
his means they were even able to correspond with Louis XVI. 
With more grief than surprise they learned that he was condemned; 
and now their last despairing thought was, "should they see him 
once more?" They were not refused this final consolation. At 
half-past eight on the evening of the 20th January, 1793, the king 
once more beheld his family. As the door of his apartment opened, 
the queen and her son entered first, Madame Elizabeth and the 
young princess followed. They all four alternately clasped him in 
their arms with convulsive sobs and bursts of grief, which lasted for 
more than half an hour. The king at length sat down ; the queen 
placed herself on his left, Madame Elizabeth on his right, and his 
children before him and between his knees. Although the room in 
which they sat had a glass door, through which commissaries could 
behold all that passed, they could not hear what the king said. He 
spoke purposely in a low tone, but the horrified gestures of Marie- 
Antoinette showed that the whole of the truth had not until then been 
revealed to her. The bearing of Louis XVI. was admirably calm, 
tender, and subdued, during the whole of this trying scene. An 



LAST INTERVIEW OF THE ROYAL FAMILY. 297 

hour and three quarters had thus elapsed, when the king rose to part 
from his family. He slowly advanced with them towards the door. 
The queen and the dauphin were on his right. Madame Elizabeth 
leaned on her brother's left shoulder, Madame Royale held her father, 
clasped around the waist ; they spoke not, but the whole room was 
filled with the sound of their tears and lamentations. " T assure 
you," said Louis, "that I will see you again at eight to-morrow 
morning." "You promise it?" they all exclaimed. " Yes, 1 pro- 
mise," he replied. "Why not at seven?" asked the queen. "Let 
it be at seven then," said her husband ; " farewell !" he then added, 
in a tone so solemn and so deep, that his daughter, as if with a con- 
sciousness of the truth, fainted away at his feet. With one more 
embrace, the king tore himself from them. 

The agony of that night was softened to Marie-Antoinette by the 
thought that she should see her husband again on the morrow ; but 
seven and eight o'clock struck, and she received no summons to 
meet the king: it was Louis himself that had declined the interview, 
lest it should prove too trying for those he loved. The whole of that 
dreadful day was spent by Marie-Antoinette in long fainting fits, 
only interrupted by bursts of agonizing grief. Time, which sub- 
dued the expression of her sorrow, could not change its nature. 
A sort of despairing resignation took possession of her soul : she 
had ceased to hope, and she now felt like one for w r hom the struggle 
of life was henceforth over. Although the gaolers informed her 
that she could resume the walks in the garden, which had for some 
time been interdicted, she refused to do so. The mere thought of 
passing before the door of the king's apartment filled her with horror. 
Lest, however, the health of her children should suffer from this con- 
finement, she consented, after several weeks' seclusion, to walk with 
them on the platform of the tower. It was immediately surrounded 
with high boards, in order that no friendly look might reach the 
queen even there. 

The comparative leniency with which the royal family had been 
treated after the death of the king, ceased abruptly on the fall of the 
Girondists. It was then decided that the queen should be tried, and 
that the dauphin should previously be taken from her. The officers 
of the convention who came to execute this barbarous order met 
with unexpected resistance. Casting away every feeling of queenly 
dignity or silent pride, the mother placed herself before the bed of 
her son, and vehemently declared that, though they might kill her, 
they should not touch her child. For two hours she defended him 
against all their efforts. They at length threatened to kill him in 
her arms if she resisted any longer. Upon this she embraced him, 
dressed him, and weepingly delivered him up. The unhappy and 
innocent child was handed over to the shoemaker, Simon : his mother 



298 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

never saw him again. Through the slits of the boards which sur- 
rounded the platform of her tower, she sometimes, after hours of 
watching, caught distant glimpses of him on the platform of the 
tower where he was confined, but that was all. 

Although she did not know every detail of the tortures Simon 
inflicted on the young prince, the queen knew enough to render her 
life inexpressibly bitter. But her sufferings were drawing to a close. 
At two in the morning on the 2d of August, Marie-Antoinette was 
abruptly wakened by the entrance, in her apartment, of two munici- 
pal officers, who read her the decree of the Convention, authorizing 
them to convey her to the Conciergerie, where she was to await her 
trial. She heard them without either sorrow or surprise; Madame 
Elizabeth and the young princess vainly entreated to be allowed to 
accompany the queen : their prayers and tears remained unheeded. 
Marie- Antoinette was compelled to rise and dress before these men: 
they even searched her, taking away all the little jewels and trifling 
articles still in her possession. They only left her a pocket hand- 
kerchief and a vinaigrette, in case she should faint whilst in their 
custody. It was with difficulty that she persuaded them to let her 
take a change of linen. When her preparations were over, she 
turned towards her sister and her child, embraced them tenderly, 
and bade them farewell. She recommended her daughter to the 
care of Madame Elizabeth, and requested Madame Royale to obey 
her aunt as if she w T ere her mother. Not daring to trust herself 
with another look, she then hastened down stairs ; so rapidly that 
she forgot to stoop in passing beneath the low door, and struck her 
head with some force against it. One of the municipal officers asked 
if she had hurt herself. " Oh, no !" she mournfully replied, " no- 
thing can hurt me now." 

She entered the hackney-coach which waited for her in the yard, 
carrying under her arm the little bundle of things she had been 
allowed to take. The cell of the Conciergerie into which the queen 
was thrown on her arrival was the worst in the prison. General 
Custine, who preceded her to the scaffold, had been removed from it 
in order that it might be given to her: it was several steps lower 
than the yard, from which it received air and light, through a narrow 
grated window; a miserable bed, a deal table, a wooden box, and 
two straw-bottomed chairs, were all the furniture it contained. The 
damp stone walls, and the close atmosphere of this gloomy abode, 
made it resemble a cellar more than a place destined to receive any 
human being. Yet this was to be the last dwelling of a woman and 
a queen! This room was entered through an antechamber, in which 
two gendarmes with naked swords were placed ; their orders were to 
keep the door which led from one room into the other always open, 
and not to lose sight of Marie- Antoinette even in her sleep. The 



SYMPATHY WITH THE FALLEN QUEEN. 299 

gaolers of the Conciergerie, Richard and his wife, — notwithstanding 
the strictness of their orders, — treated the illustrious captive with 
much kindness. Instead of the coarse prison fare, Madame Richard 
gave the queen wholesome and delicate food prepared by herself; 
she introduced a little comfort into her cell, and, diverting the atten- 
tion of the gendarmes by ingenious stratagems, secretly gave her 
news of Madame Elizabeth and her children. This worthy woman 
carried her devoted ness so far as to seek to favour the queen's escape. 
She introduced, for this purpose, Michonis and the Chevalier de 
Rougeville into her prison. The chevalier gave Marie-Antoinette a 
flower which contained a note offering her men and money; she was 
unfortunately surprised in the act of reading it. The two devoted 
men and Richard and his wife were immediately arrested and thrown 
into prison : with them vanished the queen's last hope of safety. 

The dangerous office of softening the captivity of the queen, was, 
nevertheless, eagerly sought by M. and Madame Bault, formerly 
gaolers of La Force. They rivalled the devotedness of Richard, 
whom they succeeded in the post of gaolers of the Conciergerie: 
although her orders were to give her prisoner only bread and water, 
Madame Bault, following the example of her predecessor, carefully 
prepared her food. Marie-Antoinette never drank wine, but the 
Seine water did not agree with her; Madame Bault, accordingly, 
procured her the pure water of Arcueuil, which had been her favour- 
ite beverage in Trianon, Many persons from without, who were 
allowed to visit their imprisoned relatives, took this opportunity of 
forwarding little delicacies to their fallen queen; the women of the 
Halle, who had formerly been the purveyors of the royal family, 
privately sent her presents of their fruits and flowers. It was not 
without much peril to herself that Madame Bault procured her pri- 
soner these indulgences: her husband was once severely reprimanded 
for having hung the damp walls of Marie-Antoinette's dungeon with 
an old piece of tapestry; his daughter was, however, allowed to help 
the prisoner to make her bed, and clear up her room; she also 
combed the captive's hair every morning, and mended the scanty 
supply of linen, and the two old gowns, to which the wardrobe of 
the queen of France was now reduced. 

The two months which elapsed from the 2d of August to the 
14th of October, when she appeared before the Revolutionary Tri- 
bunal, were spent by Marie-Antoinette in passive endurance. Gifted 
with a mind of great energy, with more than common pride, and 
with the keenest susceptibilities to wrong and insult, how intense 
must have been the past sufferings which could reduce her passion- 
ate and impulsive nature to a state of comparative apathy. The 
gendarmes who watched her often saw her weeping, as she knelt in 
prayer at the foot of the bed ; oftener still she sat listlessly near the 



300 WOMAN IW FRANCE. 

high window, from which a faint ray of light came down on her 
pale face, and emaciated figure: the mourning she wore made her 
look more wan and desolate still. But, though broken hearted, the 
queen was not subdued ; and this it is that justifies her pride and 
ennobles it into something sublime : for hers was not the pride to 
which rank, power, or circumstance gave birth, and which falls with 
them. Marie-Antoinette valued these things whilst they were hers, 
but they formed no part of her nature: they left her, but she was 
herself still: she was the queen, even in her dungeon; more truly 
royal within those gloomy walls than when surrounded by the splen- 
dours of Versailles. 

On the 14th of October, Marie-Antoinette was summoned before 
the tribunal, held in the adjoining Palais de Justice. She was meanly 
clad, but with evident attention to neatness and decency; her bearing 
was calm and dignified : she heard with indifference the loner act of 
accusation read by Fonquier Tinville, who asserted that the crimes 
attributed to Messalina, Brunehault, Fredegonde, and Catherine of 
Medici, were far surpassed by those committed by the widow Capet. 
She w 7 as charged with having dilapidated the finances, with plotting 
against the nation, with having caused a famine, and various other 
political offences. Her replies were laconic and composed. Sub- 
mitting to events she could not control, she entered into no useless 
and indignant protest against the past; she also avoided compro- 
mising her own life and the safety of her friends by any imprudent 
defiance: to bear patiently had become her lot. One of her motives 
for taking this line of conduct was that such had been the course 
adopted by Louis XVI. Jealous of his honour, she did not wish to 
be contrasted with, him to his disadvantage. The most infamous 
accusation against her was that of Hebert ; w r ho asserted that she 
had depraved her own child, the dauphin. Marie-Antoinette dis- 
dained to make any answer. One of the jury having pressed her 
to reply, she turned towards the crowd, her countenance lit up by 
scorn and indignant majesty, merely saying, "I appeal to all the 
mothers present." The mothers who heard her then were the furi- 
ous Tricotteuses, who daily accompanied victims to the scaffold; 
but even they had not so far given up all the feelings of womanhood, 
as to remain insensible to such an appeal, and a murmur of horror 
and indignation against Hebert ran throughout the court. When 
all the accusations against her had been heard, Marie-Antoinette was 
asked if she had anything to say: she answered, "I was a queen, 
and you took away my crown ; a wife, and you killed my husband ; 
a mother, and you deprived me of my children ; my blood alone re-. 
mains: take it, but do not make me surfer long." Chauveau de la 
Garde and Tronson du Coudray, her defenders, were then heard ; 
but their noble and courageous efforts remained unavailing. 



INSULTS OFFERED TO THE QUEEN. 301 

At four o'clock, on the morning of the 16th, she was condemned 
to die. She heard her sentence with that admirable dignity and self- 
possession which had never deserted her since the beginning of her 
trial on the 14th; although, with a, barbarity worthy of them, her 
judges had refused to let her retire, even for one moment's rest and 
scarcely allowed her any food, in the hope of subduing her courage 
with her physical strength. Once, feeling very thirsty, she asked 
for some water ; no one dared to bring her any, until she repeated 
her request, when an officer of the gendarmes, unable to resist the 
impulse, brought her a glass : he lost his post for this simple act of 
humanity. 

When the President of the Tribunal asked her if she had any 
objection to make to her sentence, the queen rose, disdaining to 
reply. The fierce applause which followed her out of the court 
could not disturb her proud composure. She retired to the Concier- 
gerie, and, having obtained writing materials, addressed to Madame 
Elizabeth a last letter — which never reached her. In this letter she 
recommended her orphan children to her sister's care, fervently 
blessing them and her ; protesting that she died in the faith of her 
fathers, and freely forgiving her enemies. She then threw herself 
on her bed, and slept for two hours. A constitutional priest was 
sent to her, but she declined his ministry. 

" Your death," he began, " is going to expiate " 

" Faults, not crimes," she interrupted. 

Two other constitutional priests who attended her proved equally 
unsuccessful. She refused to hear them, and prayed alone. After 
resting sufficiently, the queen rose, cut her hair, and dressed herself 
carefully. At eleven the executioner came, bound her hands, and 
led her to the cart. She submitted silently, heedless of all that 
passed around her, and of the representations of the priest at her 
side. * 

It is said, and on good authority* — though the fact has not, we 
believe, been alluded to by any historian — that the men who had 
not thought the accusations of Hebert too infamous for the queen, 
conceived the project of degrading her death, by causing her to be 
judged and to perish between two courtesans confined in the same 
prison with her. They boasted of their plan until it came to the 
knowledge of the women concerned in it, who, degraded as they 
were, felt and resented the intended infamy. They both declared, 
with the greatest energy, that if the project were carried into effect, 
they would, even on the scaffold and in the face of the people, fall 
down at the feet of the queen, and publicly implore her forgiveness 
for being compelled to die with her. Alarmed at the effect such a 

* Lemontey : CEuvres, vol. i. p. 280. 
26 



302 WOMAN IN FKANCE. 

scene might produce, the projectors of this infamous plan abandoned 
it reluctantly. 

It was lit tie more than eleven when the cart which contained the 
queen left the Conciergerie, yet she did not reach the Place de la 
Revolution until half-past twelve. During all that time she was 
subjected to the continued hootings and insults of the populace. 
Her firmness never forsook her; but the crimson flushes and the 
deadly paleness which rapidly succeeded each other on her cheeks, 
revealed the intense agony she endured. The cart was compelled 
to stop opposite the church of St. Roch, in order that the dense 
crowd assembled on the steps might obtain a better view of their 
victim. Overcome by her feelings, the queen bowed down her head 
for a moment. It was observed that, as she passed along the Rue 
St. Honore, she looked at the republican inscriptions and tricolor 
flags of the houses with evident curiosity : another interpretation 
placed on this incident is that the queen was watching for a signal, 
which was to reveal to her the house where a non-juring priest 
awaited her passage, in order to give her absolution. 

The countenance of Marie- Antoinette exhibited the greatest 
emotion when, on entering the Place de la Revolution, she beheld 
the palace and gardens of the Tuileries : but she soon resumed her 
calmness, and, aided by the priest and the executioner, quickly 
ascended the scaffold. In doing so she trod by chance on the foot 
of Sanson; he uttered an exclamation of pain. "Forgive me," 
she gently said. Her bearing in that solemn moment was an im- 
pressive union of calmness and dignity, as all the eye-witnesses of 
this scene — one of whom we know personally — have testified. She 
was attired in a narrow dress of white pique; a close white cap 
could not entirely conceal her hair, long since blanched by grief. 
Scarcely any traces now remained of her once dazzling loveliness; 
but her features, though thin and pale, were still majestic; a deep 
red circle surrounded her eyes, and betrayed the ceaseless weeping 
of her latter years. Thus changed from the gay, beautiful vision 
they had enthusiastically welcomed twenty-three years before, the 
widowed queen of France now stood on a scaffold before her people. 
She knelt and prayed for a few seconds in a low tone, then rose and 
calmly delivered herself over to the executioner. When her head 
had fallen benealh the knife of the guillotine, he held it up, and 
walked round the scaffold showing it to the people, and shouting, in 
a loud tone, " Vive la Republique." The crowd caught up the cry, 
which filled the whole place. 

Thus perished, in her thirty -seventh year, the widow of the 
greatest king in Europe. The daughter of Marie-Theresa, though 
less fortunate, was not less heroic than her mother. Her whole 



CHARACTER OF MARIE-ANTOINETTE. 303 

history, and the severest judgment against her, may be sum- 
med up in her own words — " Faults, not crimes." Her errors 
were those of her judgment, never of her heart. Had she sur- 
vived the Revolution, she would, however, have been judged with 
more severity. History would have asked her to account for her 
husband's fall and death, and she has only escaped this reproach by 
sharing his destiny. There are few tasks more difficult than that of 
speaking historically of Marie- Antoinette. So much of all that the 
human heart pities and reveres is blended with her name, that those 
shades in her character which, from her position, produced conse- 
quences so fatal are well-nigh forgotten. We cannot speak of the 
light and frivolous queen, without thinking of the pale prisoner of 
the Temple and the Conciergerie : and it seems strange harshness to 
dwell on indiscretions of temper and conduct, destined to be expiated 
by years of weeping anguish and death on a scaffold. 

Whatever were the errors of Marie-Antoinette, her enemies, by 
immolating her, have done much to efface them. Their stern policy 
might deem the death of the king necessary, but, from the moment 
she became a widow, the queen was a conquered foe, whom it was 
impolitic and base to sacrifice. Animated by an unworthy spirit of 
vengeance, they could not rest until they had obtained her life. The 
Revolution felt truly that Marie- Antoinette had been its most unre- 
lenting opponent; and, for this, it doomed her to perish : so invete- 
rate had been the struggle between them, that a whole nation did 
not disdain to avenge itself on a woman. But the vengeance, thus 
cowardly taken, recoiled for ever, and is an eternal reproach, on 
those who had not the magnanimity to forgive. 

Nothing is more characteristic of Marie-Antoinette than her atti- 
tude during her last hours. When they parted, her mother had 
said to her, " Think of me in the time of sorrow or danger." That 
time had come; and mindful of her words, her daughter seemed 
to have gathered to her aid all the pride of her race. She wrap- 
ped herself in a silent reserve; disdaining to hold converse with 
those who might conquer, but could not subdue her. At the tribu- 
nal, her fingers wandered idly over the arm of her chair, as if she 
were touching the keys of some musical instrument. She looked 
abstracted during the whole time: indifferent when her sentence was 
read. The constitutional priests could draw nothing save monosyl- 
lables from her. She was not haughty, defiant, or despairing : her 
bearing cannot be characterized as that of the queen or the woman. 
With worldly pomp or pride she had long done, and her mother's 
feelings slept in her heart far beyond human ken. She forgave her 
enemies ; but more, perhaps, from proud disdain than because the 
heavenly peace of mercy had descended into her soul. A stern re- 



304 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

solve to accomplish her fate unshrinkingly, sustained her through 
her last bitter trial. Perhaps the old thought : " History awaits us !" 
haunted her even then. She made not one effort to soften the 
crowd ; she spoke not a word for her justification : she perished un- 
yielding, and proudly silent to the last. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Madame Roland : her Captivity, Trial, and Death. 

As the heroines of the Revolution pass before us in succession, it 
is sad to perceive how the great, the beautiful, and the gifted seem 
to have had but one destiny — the prison and the scaffold. Was 
that, then, the bourne to which the lofty heroism of Marie-Antoinette, 
the sacrificial furor of Charlotte Corday, and the enthusiasm and 
genius of Madame Roland alike tended 7 Did heroism, beauty, and 
devotedness deserve no better fate ? 

But this similarity of destiny implied no similarity of feeling or 
character. Even Charlotte Corday differs widely from Madame 
Roland, herself so different from Marie-Antoinette. The most 
opposite actions led to the same result: every page in the his- 
tory of those evil times is equally stained with blood. We left 
Madame Roland as she entered the Abbaye, a captive ; we have now 
to follow her to the scaffold. 

Less affected by her arrest than by the fate of the party with 
whom she fell, Madame Roland was absorbed by the cries and 
tumult of the streets ; which reached even her remote cell. She 
listened with a beating heart to every sound, and waited with a 
feverish anxiety for the evening's news. It came, but brought no 
decisive tidings ; overpowered with fatigue, she sank at length into a 
heavy slumber. The next morning she read in the journal, which 
the gaoler brought her, the decree of arrest against the twenty-two 
Girondists. The paper fell from her hand : " My country is lost !" 
she passionately exclaimed ; and she bade a last and bitter farewell 
to those hopes of happiness and sublime illusions which her soul had 
cherished so long. 

But if she abandoned enthusiastic dreams, her faith in truth and 
virtue remained unshaken. No disaster could disturb the serenity 
of her soul — no fear subdue its energy. Her mode of life in her 
prison was regulated and composed : political agitation had vanished; 
she seemed to have gone back to the pure and happy days of her 



HER RELEASE AND RE-APPREHENSION. 305 

youth, securely spent beneath her father's humble roof. She made 
every necessary effort to procure her freedom ; she wrote to the As- 
sembly, protesting against her illegal arrest ; she sent remonstrances 
to the sections ; but when these efforts remained unavailing, she be- 
trayed neither despondency nor surprise. Her first care was to 
procure a few books: Thomson, Plutarch, and Tacitus soothed and 
fortified her soul. When she felt wearied with thought and solitude, 
she relaxed her mind by drawing. Flowers, with which the few 
friends who still visited her in her adversity provided her, filled her 
gloomy cell with their fragrance and beauty, and appeased her cap- 
tive's lono;insi: for that loveliness of nature which was never more to 
bless her yearning heart. 

After a captivity of twenty-four days, Madame Roland was unex- 
pectedly released. The order for her liberation stated that there 
was nothing against her. She left her cell in the Abbaye — which 
was afterwards tenanted by two kindred spirits, Brissot and Char- 
lotte Corday — and hastened home with a heart full of joy. Scarcely 
had she passed the threshold of her dwelling when she was again 
apprehended. Her release was onl}' owing to the persevering hatred 
of her enemies ; her first apprehension being grossly illegal, they 
took this method of securing their victim. Madame Roland, without 
being even allowed to embrace her child, was immediately conveyed 
to Sainte-Pelagie, the prison usually awarded to women of dissolute 
life. The son of her landlady was afterwards sent to the guillotine 
for having protested against her apprehension. The shock she thus 
experienced proved at first too much for the fortitude of Madame 
Roland. Her soul for several days remained overwhelmed with 
grief; but she gradually regained her composure, and felt almost 
indignant at her previous weakness. She now freely made the sacri- 
fice of her life, which she perceived was forfeited to the hatred of 
her foes ; but she resolved to use nobly whatever of it was still left, 
and with that independence of her faculties " which a strong soul 
preserves even in chains, and which disappoints the most eager 
foes."* 

The sufferings of Madame Roland, in her new prison, were at 
first very severe. She was compelled to inhabit a narrow cell, 
where her ears were constantly assailed by the infamous language 
of the neighbouring prostitutes. The compassion of Madame Bon- 
chaud, the gaoler's wife, softened her captivity. Her room was ex- 
changed for another. She was allowed the enjoyment of comforts, 
and even of a few luxuries : a jessamine hid the bars of her window, 
and a hired piano beguiled the tediousness of her prison hours. But 
the kindness she experienced did not blind her to her ultimate fate : 

* Memoirs, p. 202, vol. ii. 

26* 



306 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

for that fate she now prepared, by beginning her " Memoirs" on the 
9th of August, 1793. 

The enemies of Madame Roland had long assailed her private 
and public character with the coarsest and most calumnious imputa- 
tions. She resolved to lay bare her life from childhood to the pre- 
sent hour, and thus solemnly appeal from the judgment of her con- 
temporaries to that of posterity. Her memoirs depict Madame Ro- 
land as no other pen can ever paint her. We see her there as she 
was : a beautiful, real being, heroic and serene, and bearing, through 
all her rashness and pride, the tokens of a soul so noble and so 
pure, as will call forth the admiration and reverence of future ages. 
The charming ease and grace with which she retraces the history 
of her childhood, the sudden transition from those fresh and pure 
images of the past to the fearful gloom of the present, the burning 
eloquence of her indignation against the tyrants of France, the com- 
manding strength of mind which she unconsciously displays, render 
these memoirs almost unique: not, indeed, as a literary production, 
great as their merits are, but as a work destined to fasten with deep 
and irresistible power on the human heart. 

These memoirs possess, moreover, a dramatic interest, peculiar to 
themselves and to the circumstances under which they were written. 
When we read of the enthusiastic child poring over the old volume 
of Plutarch, we think of her who writes those pages, in a prison, 
with the scaffold awaiting its victim. She herself interrupts those 
pictures of her childhood to weep, not over her fate, but over her 
friends and her country. In the brief and passionate eloquence 
with which she draws the fearful picture of oppressed and degraded 
France, we perceive the source of her former power, and recognise 
the soul of the Gironde. The pages of those memoirs, which she 
wrote and confided by stealth to her friend Champagneux, are occa- 
sionally broken off with mournful intimations that they may never 
be finished. On the 5th of September, 1793, we find her writing 
thus, in a note to Champagneux, " I cut this copy in order to place 
what is written in the little box. When I perceive that a revolu- 
tionary army has been decreed, that new tribunals of blood are being 
formed, that the land is menaced with famine, and that tyrants no 
longer know what to do, I feel that they are going to make new 
victims, and that no one is assured of life." 

Conscious of her approaching fate, she hurried over her task : the 
last pages of the memoirs bear evident traces of the haste with which 
they were written. She expresses herself thus in October: "I 
have been interrupted, in order to be informed that I am comprised 
in the act of accusation with Brissot, and so many other deputies 
recently arrested. The tyrants think to fill the chasm open before 
them by casting in honest men ; but they shall fall into it after 



MADAME ROLAND REFUSES TO BE SAVED. 307 

them. I do not fear to go to the scaffold in such good company : there 
would be shame in living amongst guilty wretches. I shall send 
this copy and continue with another, if I am not prevented. Friday, 
4th of October ; birthday of my daughter, who is this day twelve 
years old." 

The thought of her daughter was the only one that could disturb 
her heroic serenity. Helen-Maria Williams has left the following 
account of a visit which she paid to Madame Roland in the prison 
of Sainte-Pelagie : "Her soul, superior to circumstances, retained 
its accustomed serenity, and she conversed with the same animated 
cheerfulness in her little cell as she used to do in the hotel of the 
minister. She had provided herself with a few books, and I found 
her reading Plutarch. She told me that she expected to die; and 
the look of placid resignation with which she said it, convinced me 
that she was prepared to meet death with a firmness worthy of her 
exalted character. When 1 inquired after her daughter, an only 
child of twelve years of age, she burst into tears ; and, at the over- 
whelming recollection of her husband and child, the courage of 
the victim of liberty was lost in the feelings of the wife and the 
mother." 

With the exception of Vergniaud and a few more, the Girondists 
were not all aware of their destiny : Brissot considered his acquittal 
possible. Jealous of the honour of her friend, and unwilling that 
he should be led to betray any unworthy weakness, Madame Roland 
wrote to him from her prison, and stoically undeceived him. No- 
thing could show in a stronger light the severe truthfulness of her 
friendship. 

Towards the close of her imprisonment, Madame Roland received 
several offers of escape; of which she refused to avail herself. One 
of those offers came from Madame Bonchaud, the gaoler's wife, who 
had conceived a warm attachment for her prisoner, and passionately 
entreated her to allow herself to be saved. No prayers could induce 
Madame Roland to comply. Henriette Cannet, one of the convent 
friends to whom she addressed the long correspondence recently 
published, visited her in her prison for the same purpose. Henriette, 
who was somewhat older than her friend, had been destined by her 
parents for M. Roland, whom she secretly loved ; she, however, 
approved his choice when he preferred and married Manon, and the 
harmony of their friendship was not once disturbed by this event. 
Madame Roland hurriedly alludes to the offer of Henriette towards 
the close of her memoirs. It was thus related by Henriette herself 
to a friend : " I was a widow," said she, " and I had no children ; 
Madame Roland, on the contrary, had a husband advanced in years 
and a lovely little girl: both needed her utmost care. What could 
be more natural than for me to expose my useless life in order to 



308 W0MA.N IN FRANCE. 

save hers, so precious to her family ? I wanted her to exchange her 
attire for mine, and to endeavour to escape whilst I remained behind. 
But neither prayers nor tears availed. ' They would kill thee, my 
good Henriette,' she unceasingly repeated : ' thy blood would ever 
fall on me. Sooner would I suffer death a thousand times, than 
reproach myself with thine!' Seeing that nothing could move her, 
1 bade her farewell : to behold her no more." 

Madame Roland at first thought that she was to be tried with the 
Girondists; but the judges dreaded the effect of her beauty and elo- 
quence, and she was not called forward even as witness. The 
twenty-two Girondists heard their sentence, and met its execution 
without shrinking. Young, patriotic, and some of them gifted with 
surpassing eloquence, they perished on the fatal Place de la Revo- 
lution, for having resisted the progress of the Reign of Terror. 
They acted in the spirit of the two noble lines of their friend, Con- 
dorcet : 

"lis m'ont dit: choisis d'etre oppresseur ou victime; 
J'embrassai le malheur et leur laissai le crime." 

And this it is that has purified and ennobled their memory. If they 
yielded too much to popular excesses, they heroically withstood the 
most fearful tyranny on record. Their resistance was sealed with 
blood ; but the first shed was their own : when their errors are re- 
membered, this will not be forgotten. 

On the day of their execution, 31st of October, 1793, Madame 
Roland was transferred to the Conciergerie, which they had just left 
for the scaffold, and thrown into a damp and gloomy dungeon. She 
had no bed, until one of the prisoners gave her up his; and, not- 
withstanding the severity of the weather, she was allowed no co- 
vering. Her room was close to that which Marie-Antoinette had 
left a few days before her arrival. There was a strange link be- 
tween the destinies of those two women. Born within a few months 
of each other — one in the sheltering obscurity of the French bour- 
geoisie, the other on the steps of an imperial throne — they met in 
antagonism on the stormy path of the French Revolution. Both 
were beautiful, ardent, and heroic, and helped to ruin, by their im- 
prudence, the opposite causes to which they clung. In her repub- 
lican ardour, Madame Roland hastened the fall of Marie-Antoinette ; 
but it was, after enjoying a brief triumph, to end by following the 
fallen queen in her dungeon, and to perish on the same scaffold. 
Opposed in life, the two rivals met in death : the revolutionary axe 
knew no distinction of victims. 

In this her last prison, Madame Roland displayed her habitual 
firmness. On the day following her arrival, she was examined for 
three hours by the judge, David. Her eloquence and presence of 



FIRMNESS OF MADAME ROLAND. 309 

mind did not once forsake her. She wrote to the last; as if it were 
beyond the power of external events to disturb her serenity. She 
often spoke at the iron grating which divided the part of the prison 
in which men were confined from that which she inhabited. RioufTe, 
one of the few amongst those who beheld her then, that survived 
the Reign of Terror, thus describes the effect she produced upon 
him : " Something more than what usually appears in the looks of 
woman painted itself in her large dark eyes, full of expression and 
sweetness. She spoke at the grating with the freedom and courage 
of a great man. We were all attentive around her, in a sort of ad- 
miration and amazement. Her discourse was grave, without cold- 
ness. She expressed herself with a purity, a harmony, and a pro- 
sody, that rendered her language a music with which the ear never 
became sated. She never spoke of the deputies who had perished, 
save with respect ; but at the same time without effeminate pity: 
she even reproached them with not having taken sufficiently vigo- 
rous measures. She generally designated them as 'our friends.' 
She often called Claviere, in order to speak to him. Sometimes 
the feelings of her sex prevailed, and the traces of tears showed that 
she had been weeping at the thought of her child and her husband. 
This mixture of strength and weakness rendered her more interest- 
ing. The woman who attended her said to me one day, — ' Before 
you she collects her strength, but in her own room she will sit three 
hours, sometimes, leaning on her window and weeping.' " 

Although without a doubt of her ultimate fate, she took notes of 
her interrogatories, and prepared her defence, from a feeling of 
duty; she addressed several farewell letters to those she had loved, 
amongst the rest to an attached female servant. " Remember thy 
mother," she wrote to her youthful daughter; " be worthy of thy 
parents : they leave thee great examples, and if thou knowest how 
to profit by them, thine shall not be a useless life. Farewell, be- 
loved child A time may come when thou shalt be able to 

judge of the effort I now make not to allow myself to be softened by 
thy gentle image. I press thee to my bosom. Farewell, Eudora !" 

The day before her trial, Madame Roland was visited by her 
counsel, Chauveau de la. Garde, the defender of Charlotte Corday 
and Marie-Antoinette. She drew a ring from her finger, and said, 
" To-morrow, I shall be no more. I know the fate which awaits 
me. Your kind assistance cannot avail aught for me, and would 
but endanger you, without saving my life. I pray you, therefore, 
not to come to the tribunal, but to accept of this last testimony of 
my regard." Early on the following day she appeared before the 
revolutionary tribunal, attired in white as a symbol of her innocence. 
She had been refused the means of dressing her long dark hair, 
which fell in thick waves about her neck and shoulders, and down 



310 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

to her waist. Never had she looked more lovely. " She would 
have softened the hardest hearts," said Riouffe : " but had those 
monsters hearts '?" Her trial was, like that of the Girondists, a 
mockery of all justice. She was not allowed to read her defence : the 
president interrupted her repeatedly, and when she appealed to the 
people, they answered with cries of " To the guillotine !" Insulting 
questions affecting her honour were addressed to her by Fouquier 
Tinville. Tears of indignant shame rose to her eyes ; but she an- 
swered him with such eloquent scorn that her replies were imme- 
diately checked, lest they should influence the jury. No injustice 
could, however, subdue her proud and dignified bearing. She glo- 
ried openly in that which her enemies made a subject of reproach. 
She declared herself proud of being the wife of Roland, and of 
having been the friend of the martyred Girondists. Her innocence 
was so evident, that, in order to be able to convict her of some os- 
tensible crime, the judge was compelled to ask her to reveal the 
asylum of her husband. She refused to do so, declaring that she 
knew of no law by which she could be obliged to violate the strong- 
est feelings of nature. This sufficed, and she was immediately 
condemned. 

On hearing her sentence read, she rose, and said with mingled 
irony and dignity, " I must thank you for thinking me worthy of 
sharing the fate of the great men whom you have assassinated. I 
shall endeavour to imitate their firmness on the scaffold. 1 ' She left 
the hall of judgment, and returned to the Conciergerie, with a light 
and rapid step that seemed to betoken a feeling of inward joy. All 
the prisoners were waiting to see her appear under the gloomy 
vault which was to give forth so many victims. Passing her hand 
across her neck, with a quick and significant gesture, she intimated 
that she had been condemned, and that the sentence was death. 
Though she had opium in her possession, she nobly disdained to 
commit suicide. She re-entered her room for a few hours, and then 
ascended the last of the carts which were that day, 10th of Novem- 
ber, 1793, going to the scaffold. Her pure white garments and 
dark flowing tresses increased the chaste and spiritual character of 
her beauty. She was calm, but with a higher calmness than that 
of resignation. Hers was the serenity of a noble soul in its last and 
solemn triumph, when the struggle between life and death is past. 
She knew that martyrdom, even more so than genius, can confer 
fame: the scaffold was for her but the threshold of a glorious im- 
mortality. 

Madame Roland was seated in the cart with an infirm old man, 
named La Marche, who wept and testified the deepest dejection as 
they proceeded to the place of execution. The heroic-souled woman 
did not disdain to administer gentle consolation to her weak com- 



MADAME ROLAND AT THE SCAFFOLD. 311 

panion. She endeavoured to inspire him with her own serene and 
cheerful courage, and succeeded in making him smile several times 
during their progress. The scaffold stood on what was then the 
Place de la Revolution, a naked dreary space, extending between 
the gardens of the Tuileries and the Champs Elysees. This spot, 
now known as the Place de la Concorde, is perhaps the most mag- 
nificent place in Europe. One of the two marble fountains with 
which it is adorned has been erected on the spot where the red 
guillotine formerly received the noblest blood of France, and the 
Egyptian obelisk rises where the clay statue of a hollow freedom 
looked down on the instrument of death. 

The cart which bore Madame Roland and her companion stopped 
at the foot of the scaffold. La Marche was pale and trembling. A 
feeling of generous and sublime compassion rilled Madame Roland's 
heart in this last moment. The privilege of ascending the scaffold 
first, and being thus spared the lingering torture of beholding her 
companion's death, had been granted to her as a woman : she re- 
solved to waive her right in favour of the infirm and terrified old 
man. Turning towards him, she gently said, " Go first : let me at 
least spare you the pain of seeing my blood shed." The executioner, 
of whom she begged that this last indulgence might be granted to 
her companion, refused to accede to the proposed arrangement, 
telling her his orders were that she should die first. " But you can- 
not, I am sure," she replied, with a serene smile, " refuse the last 
request of a lady." He still hesitated, but ended at length by com- 
plying with her desire. 

When the execution of La Marche was over, Madame Roland 
ascended the scaffold in her turn : she gazed for a while on the 
statue of Liberty, which seemed to have been placed in bitter 
mockery near the guillotine, and bowing gravely before it, pro- 
nounced the memorable words, " Ah, Liberty! how many crimes 
are committed in thy name !" With this last protest against the 
stern tyranny which had usurped the name of republican freedom, 
she delivered herself over to the executioner and accomplished her 
destiny. 

It is said that on her way to the scaffold, and almost at the foot 
of the guillotine, Madame Roland asked for a pen and some paper, 
in order to write down the deep and unusual emotions which ap- 
proaching death had awakened in her soul. The request was re- 
fused : it was a strange and solemn one to make at such an hour, 
when she stood on the very threshold of earthly life and eternity. 
Did she wish to continue her unfinished memoirs to the last 1 Or 
to pour forth once more her burning eloquence against the tyrants 
of France? Never were her calm fearlessness of death itself, and 
her longing desire not to pass away from life without leaving some 



312 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

further record of her better part behind, more strongly displayed. 
What would not posterity now give for that unwritten page 1 Her 
thoughts would have flown calmly even then ; for she had that sere- 
nity which is true courage ; but the last breathings of that heroic 
spirit were not destined to be revealed on earth. 

There is in the stoicism of Madame Roland something so extra- 
ordinary that many persons have been repelled by it from a closer 
study of her character. Women have often died with as much 
heroism, but few have met death so unshrinkingly. This feeling 
did not arise, in Madame Roland, from indifference to life : she knew 
how to value it rightly ; but, if purchased at the cost of honour, she 
held it worthless. She had mourned over her premature fate, and 
wept for hours in her prison ; she was serene and undaunted on the 
scaffold : the struggle was then past : for all strong minds — and 
they alone can feel deeply — the bitterness of a sacrifice lies not in 
the hour of its external accomplishment, but in that by which it has 
been preceded. Was it on the cross that the Saviour of mankind 
said, " Oh, Father ! take this cup from me !" or when, bending be- 
neath the weight of his lonely agony, he watched and prayed on the 
Olive Mount ? 

The stoicism of Madame Roland has been regarded as a proof 
that she was unwomanly. She perhaps lacked that humanity which 
exists in those souls alone who feel the nothingness of man before 
the infinite greatness of God : but men are seldom attracted by un- 
feminine women ; and yet all the Girondists, and at first the Moun- 
taineers, gathered around her, and, notwithstanding their mutual 
distrust, long remained bound by a spell they could not shake off. 
If she failed in the gentler virtues of woman, why was she so sin- 
cerely loved by those who approached her ? Her faithful female 
servant, on learning the death of her mistress, was seized with a 
grief so deep, that, presenting herself before the revolutionary tribu- 
nal, she asked the sanguinary judges who had condemned Madame 
Roland to allow her to perish on the same scaffold : the violence of 
her despair caused them to dismiss her as insane. A man named 
Lecoq, who had been employed by Madame Roland in some menial 
capacity, and who had conceived for her the most devoted attach- 
ment, also appeared before the tribunal with a similar request; his 
prayer was granted : he was condemned, and immediately guillo- 
tined. 

When the fugitive and remaining Girondists learned, in their 
retreat, the death of the beautiful and heroic woman around whom 
they had formerly gathered, and whose eloquence had so often 
cheered them, they were filled with sorrow and horror. Buzot 
remained for several days delirious : the depth of his grief revealed 



REFLECTIONS. 313 

the fervour of the attachment he is asserted to have felt for Madame 
Roland. 

She had foretold that Roland would not survive her: her predic- 
tion was fulfilled. His first intention, on learning her death, was 
to proceed to Paris, appear in the convention, and there, after so- 
lemnly upbraiding the Mountaineers for the murder of his wife, 
either to perish by their hands or die on the scaffold. The conside- 
ration that his property would be forfeited to the state if he were 
judicially condemned, and that his only child would thus be left 
destitute, made him alter his decision and resolve on being the 
instrument of his own death. After bidding the friends to whose 
kindness he owed an asylum a last farewell, he left them, and 
proceeded alone on the road leading from Rouen to Paris. A few 
passengers found him the next morning seated at the foot of a tree, 
and reclining against the trunk. He had stabbed himself to the 
heart, and was quite dead : his whole attitude was calm and com- 
posed, like that of a man in a deep slumber : he had fastened to his 
dress a piece of paper, on which were written the following words, 
" Whoever thou mayest be, respect these remains ; they are those 
of a virtuous man : on learning the death of my wife, I would not 
remain one day longer in a world stained with crimes." 

The death of Madame Roland will remain as one of the greatest 
stains on the history of the revolution. And yet it is difficult to 
lament that death. 

" After life's fitful fever, she sleeps well." 

It was well for her to die thus, in the noonday of life ; her pure and 
heroic dreams still fresh in her soul ; her noble blood poured freely 
forth for the cause she had loved ; her name beyond the reach of 
reproach or doubt. She died young; but what would have been 
her fate if she had passed unscathed through the days of terror, and 
lived 1 To be contemned ; to see her motives misunderstood; to be 
accused of vanity, insincerity, and pride; to be stigmatized as un- 
womanly in her conduct and feelings ; such might have been her 
destiny, until, bowed down by years, she carried an obscure and 
unhonoured name to the grave. " To die at the right time," has 
been pronounced by Chateaubriand a condition of glory : that con- 
dition Madame Roland fulfilled : it was well for herself and for 
posterity: happiness and length of days are not the only objects of 
human life. To be faithful to the truth within us is far better, and 
more noble, than to live. A destiny like hers outweighed all suffer- 
ing and alt sorrow : she felt it, and this it was that upheld her to 
the last. 

Hers is one of those names which, through all the differences of 
political and religious creeds, mankind should keep with reverent 

27 



314 WOMAN IN PRANCE. 

memory. If she erred, she erred nobly ; for it was through a fer- 
vent and exaggerated faith in freedom and humanity. Higher are 
such errors than the cold virtues the angel reproved through him of 
Pat m os.* 

It requires little knowledge of the revolutionary era to see at a 
glance, that being cast on such times, Madame Roland could not 
have escaped her destiny. On a retrospective view of that great 
drama, it almost seems as though the parts of all the actors had 
been marked out in advance by fate. Hers was that of one who 
could not live in abject fear ; behold deeds of blood, yet be silent: 
who must speak out, though the scaffold were in view ; pour forth 
her indignant soul and die a martyr, if not to freedom, at least to 
truth. For in those days, so aptly named Days of Terror, it was 
the craven who lived, and the brave, whatever their political creed 
might be, who perished. 

Eventful as is the history of the French Revolution, it offers few 
pages so touching as those which relate to Madame Roland. Beau- 
tiful, heroic, devoted, and accomplished, she spent the greater por- 
tion of her life in obscurity, appeared in the world for a few brief 
moments, acted her part, and died on a scaffold. Fidelity to its 
own impulses is the test- of a noble nature. Judged by that test, 
Madame Roland stands pure before us. Nor will her name pass 
forgotten. It is imperishably associated with some of the most stir- 
ring recollections of her country : with its noble, though vain, 
dreams of freedom, and the story of its brave and heroic men. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Woman under the Reign of Terror. 

Although we have brought forward, and noticed separately, a 
few prominent heroines of the Revolution, it must not be concluded 
that there was anything singular in the end of these illustrious vic- 
tims, howsoever remarkable their character or destiny may have 
been otherwise. The scaffc+d on which they perished was daily 
stained with the blood of the lowly and the great. Crime or virtue, 
eminence or obscurity, met the same fate. The Reign of Terror 
had begun. 

We have seen how, after the massacres of September, the Giron- 
dists commenced against the Jacobins that memorable struggle 

* Apoc. iii. 15, 16. 



THE REIGN OF TERROR. 315 

which ended with their fall. They foresaw the rule of blood which 
their antagonists wished to establish ; they opposed it, and had the 
honour of perishing amongst its earliest victims. Madame Roland, 
who urged them on in their resistance, Charlotte Corday, who 
avenged them, both shared their fate. Had the Girondists suc- 
ceeded, the blood of a widowed and defenceless queen would never 
have been shed, and crimes much darker still might have been 
spared to France. 

The fall of this party on the 31st of May, 1793, occurred at a 
period when the internal convulsions of France menaced the cause 
of the Revolution on every side. La Vendee had risen, Lyons was 
in open revolt, and every province protested and murmured against 
the tyranny of Paris. A fanatic, named Chalier, endeavoured to 
renew in Lyons the scenes of blood which disgraced the capital. In 
the month of September, 1792, a band of assassins murdered eleven 
officers confined in the fort of Pierre-Encise. The beautiful Made- 
moiselle de Bellecice, daughter of the governor, heroically threw 
herself between the murderers and their victims, and was severely 
wounded in her vain attempt to save the prisoners. The Lyonnese, 
indignant at the sanguinary sway Chalier sought to fasten upon 
them, effected a reaction, and condemned him to perish : the first 
victim of the guillotine which he had brought and erected for his 
opponents. These events occurred precisely at the time when the 
Girondists were conquered in Paris by the Mountaineers. 

The citizens of Lyons were too much committed to retract: en- 
couraged by the fugitive royalists and Girondists, who had found a 
refuge in their city, they resolved to brave the Convention. They 
hoped and believed that similar insurrections would rise throughout 
all France. Some of them counted on the foreign troops promised 
by the exiled princes ; and all felt that, were they even doomed to 
fall, it was better to perish in the defence of their city, than to yield 
themselves up without a struggle to the tyranny of the Jacobins. 
The siege of Lyons, which lasted two months, is celebrated even 
amongst the memorable and fatal events of the French Revolution. 
The most indomitable heroism was displayed on one side, and the 
most persevering cruelty on the other. It was not until the town 
was nearly in ruins, and its defenders had been reduced to one-half 
of their original number, by death and famine, that the Lyonnese 
at length resolved to surrender. Terror immediately entered their 
walls with the triumphant Jacobins. The fury of the conquerors 
resembled insanity. They changed the name of Lyons, and de- 
creed that it should be demolished. Fifteen millions were spent in 
destroying the finest buildings of this wealthy city. The prisons 
were crowded to suffocation ; victims of either sex and every age 
were guillotined, until the waters of the Rhone became reddened 



316 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

with their blood ; when this mode of death was not found sufficiently- 
expeditious, rows of two hundred prisoners were cannonaded and 
shot at once, in the plains outside the walls. 

The women of Lyons displayed a singular degree of heroism 
during the whole time of the siege, and, after the surrender of the 
city, many fought with their husbands and brothers at the breach ; 
and, like them, expiated their patriotism on a scaffold. Amongst 
them was a beautiful girl of seventeen, named Marie Adrian. The 
judges, touched with her beauty, and struck with her courageous re- 
plies, asked her what she would do if they were to grant her her 
life. " I would kill you, as the enemies of my country," replied 
the undaunted girl. She ascended the scaffold with a firm step. 
After her execution the following letter, written with blood, was 
found in her bosom. It came from her affianced lover, at whose side 
she had fought, and who had been shot a few days before, in the 
plain of the Brotteaux. " At this hour to-morrow," he wrote, " I 
shall be no more. I will not die without saying once more, I love 
thee. Were my pardon offered me to say the contrary, I should 
refuse it. I have no ink : I opened a vein to write to thee with my 
blood. Would that I might mingle it with thine throughout eternity. 
Adieu, my dear Marie, weep not : let the angels find thee as beautiful 
as I shall in heaven. I go to wait for thee : tarry not long." 

Death became a boon eagerly sought for by those who survived 
the massacres around them. A young girl presented herself before 
the tribunal, and exclaimed, addressing the judges, " You have killed 
my father, my brothers, and my betrothed ; you have left me nothing 
to live for: kill me now." Her request was refused, and in her 
despair she threw herself into the Rhone. Another girl, brought 
before the tribunal, displayed a contempt of life greater still ; because 
it was not inspired by wounded affection, but by a fervent indigna- 
tion against the oppressors of her countrymen. She was accused 
of refusing to wear the national cockade. " Why wilt thou not 
wear the sign of the people?" asked the president. " Because you 
wear it," she answered. The president wishing, nevertheless, to 
save her, made a sign to the gaoler behind her, who fastened the 
cockade in her hair ; but she tore it away indignantly, preferring 
death to the dishonour of wearing a badge which, from the rallying 
sign of freedom, had become that of tyranny. 

But female heroism and devotedness were still more touchingly 
displayed in the prisons of Lyons, which were chiefly filled with the 
compromised defenders of the city. Every morning, crowds of 
women might be seen waiting at the prison gates to gain admittance. 
Threats or insults could not turn them away from their task of love. 
They obtained by bribery what the pity of the gaolers would have 
denied : the privilege of entering the ♦prisons, clothing and feeding 



4 MADEMOISELLE DELLEGLACE. 317 

the inmates, often in a fearful state of destitution, attending on them 
in their sickness, cleaning their wretched cells, and favouring escapes 
at the peril of their own lives. Amongst the devoted Lyonnese 
women, none ought to occupy a more distinguished place than Made- 
moiselle Delleglace. Her father was arrested and ordered to be 
transferred from Lyons to Paris. His daughter requested to accom- 
pany him, but was inhumanly refused. She, nevertheless, resolved 
to follow him, and accordingly travelled on foot the distance of a 
hundred and nineteen leagues. When she reached Paris, her father 
was in the Conciergerie, and she was not permitted to see him. For 
three months she solicited his freedom, from all the influential men 
of the day, and at length succeeded in accomplishing her object. 
M. Delleglace was liberated, and set out for Lyons, with his over* 
joyed daughter. But the devoted girl was never more to behold the 
home she had won back for her father. The frail form which had 
heroically endured fatigues so great, could not bear the slow progress 
of an easy journey. The superhuman strength by which she had 
been sustained until the purpose of her heart was won, vanished 
now that it was no longer needed for the accomplishment of her holy 
task. She fell ill on the way, declined rapidly, and died within a 
week of her father's liberation. 

Happy were those who died, like Mademoiselle Delleglace, and 
who did not live to behold the misery and desolation of the land. 
Women, pious, pure, and lowly, were not more spared than if they 
had been wealthy and great. It almost seemed as if it were a crime 
to live. At the time of the siege of Lyons, there dwelt in that city 
a single woman of great generosity and virtue, named Francoise 
Michallet, and who, like Dorcas in the Apostolic times, was known 
by the good works and alms-deeds which she did. She was sent to 
prison for confessing her attachment to the proscribed faith : for 
such had Christianity now become. From the loathsome dungeon 
where she was confined, she wrote in the following terms to one of 
her friends : " When shall we leave this land of malediction and 
death : this land whence virtue is almost banished, and where crime 
is greeted into a divinity 1 Oh ! Death, how blessed art thou to the 
heart that sigheth for its God !" Francoise was soon condemned by 
the tribunal ; she slept on the night preceding her execution with 
more tranquillity than she had yet manifested. Before going forth 
to death, she divested herself of all the clothes with which she could 
dispense, and even took off her shoes and stockings, in order to dis- 
tribute them amongst the poor. It was a damp and chill February 
morning, and one of the turnkeys observed to her that she would 
catch cold. " Not for long," was her calm and laconic reply. She 
was executed with eleven women and one man, a priest. Francoise 
Michallet asked as a favour to perish last, in order to exhort and 

27* 



318 WOMAN EH FRANCE. 

encourage her companions to the end. When we see such great 
victims as Marie-Antoinette and Madame Roland dying courageously, 
we may, without suspecting their firmness, believe that they were 
not indifferent to the judgment which posterity would pass on their 
last moments : but what had the obscure girl of Lyons to hope from 
fame, when she asked to see twelve heads fall before her own, in 
order that she might accomplish her heroic and Christian task? 

Similar scenes were enacted throughout all France. The repre- 
sentatives of the people sent by the Convention to the provinces, 
exercised their unlimited power with unparalleled insolence and 
tyranny. They seized on the property of inoffensive citizens, sent 
them and their families to death, burned out whole villages, and de- 
vastated the country; as if, instead of their own native land, it were 
the unfriendly soil of a conquered foe. Persons remotely suspected 
of royalism or of federalism were, without remission, doomed to die. 
Wealth and talents became so many crimes worthy of death. Some 
perished because they were sad, others because they were too gay. 
Individuals were forbidden, as in Lyons, to weep for their murdered 
relatives: they were expected to rejoice when the head of one they 
loved had fallen beneath the knife of the guillotine. Amongst the 
great offences of those times was public or even private adherence 
to Christianity. It is true that constitutional worship was authorized 
by the state, but the Atheist faction, headed by Anacharsis Clootz, 
and Hebert, succeeded in causing the churches to be closed or dese- 
crated by the impious adoration of the Goddess of Reason. As long 
as this state of things prevailed, and even for a longer period, non- 
juring priests, nuns whose convents had been opened, and persons 
noted for their attachment to religion, were daily hurried to the guil- 
lotine. 

Maignet, proconsul of the department of Vaucluse. whence he ex- 
ercised a dictatorial sway over a considerable portion of the south 
of France, made the town of Orange the seat of his arbitrary power. 
With the approbation of the Committee of Public Safety, he esta- 
blished a Revolutionary Tribunal, free from the encumbrance of a 
jury; but held by five judges, who were to convict without proof 
whenever they felt satisfied of the guilt of the accused. Thirty-two 
nuns were amongst the victims which Maignet was thus enabled to 
immolate. On the 13th of May, 1794, forty-two nuns of different 
orders were thrown at once into the prisons of Orange. They all 
determined, on the day which followed their incarceration, to adopt 
the same rule, and share with one another whatever they possessed, 
like the Christians in the primitive ages of the church. In the space 
of two months, thirty-two of these nuns were led to death; ten sur- 
vived the Reign of Terror. It was generally at nine in the morning 
that they were summoned, five or six at a time, before the tribunal. 



EXECUTION OF NUNS AT ORANGE. 319 

Previous to that hour the nuns, who in their prison led a life of 
monastic regularity, assembled to read the prayers for the dying, 
and to renew their baptismal and religious vows. Those who were 
called away bade their sisters a farewell they knew to be the last. 
Whilst waiting the hour of their execution, they were placed in a 
court named the Circus, because, according to popular tradition, it 
formed part of an arena where, in the days of Nero, Christians had 
formerly suffered for the faith. At six in the evening, the general 
hour of execution, the surviving nuns again read the prayers for the 
dying; they all prayed in silence, when loud cries from without, 
accompanied by the sound of the drum, announced the departure of 
the condemned for the scaffold. When all was over, they filled the 
prison with the solemn strains of the Te Deuni Laudamus. Those 
who perished met their fate with all the enthusiasm of fervent re- 
ligious conviction, and with that simplicity and resignation charac- 
teristic of their sex. Two of the nuns were one day called to the 
tribunal, somewhat later than the usual hour. " But," observed one 
of them, with ingenious earnestness, to the gendarmes, "we have 
not said our vespers!" "We shall say them in heaven to-day," 
replied her companion. So far were they from dreading death, that 
one of them offered herself daily, and unasked, to the gendarmes 
who came to call her companions. She at last appeared before the 
tribunal with her sister, and was the only one condemned that day. 
"Alas!" mournfully cried her sister, " must you, then, go to mar- 
tyrdom without me? What shall 1 do in this exile, when you leave 
me ?" Her exile, as she termed it, did not last more than a week. 
Many of these enthusiastic nuns, on hearing their sentence, thanked 
the judges for the eternal happiness they were procuring them. 
Several devoutly kissed the guillotine as the blessed instrument of 
their martyrdom. The gendarmes who led them to the scaffold, 
looked upon them with undisguised wonder ; and afterwards ob- 
served, " These nuns go to death as joyfully as if they went to a 
wedding." 

What were the crimes of these women'? That, in an age of un- 
equalled profligacy and corruption, they remained apart, to lead a 
life of purity and peace, to pray for the erring and relieve the 
wretched. That they repudiated the freedom which the Revolution 
gave them, in order to remain faithful to the vows they had willingly 
embraced: for this they perished. 

As severe as the religious persecutions were those which the pro- 
consuls directed against the fugitive Girondists and their adherents. 
In the province which they had represented with so much courage 
and eloquence, the proscribed deputies of the Gironde could scarcely 
find a roof beneath which they might repose in safety. But, whilst 
man shrank from them in fear, they found woman, with a few ex- 



320 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

ceptions, ever hospitable and kind. Madame Bouquey, sister-in-law 
of the Girondist Guadet, left Paris for Saint-Emilion, near Bourdeaux, 
on purpose to assist him and his friends. She first concealed him, 
with Salles, in the deep grottoes of Saint-Emilion; to one of which 
her house gave access through a sort of well thirty feet deep. 
Hearing of the miserable plight of Barbaroux, Louvet, and Valady, 
she immediately said, " Let them come." Not long after this, she 
received intimation of the fact that Buzot and Pethion had been com- 
pelled to change their asylum seven times within the space of a fort- 
night. "Ah! let them come too," exclaimed the kind-hearted 
woman. They came, and were received as though their presence 
were not fraught with death. Seven outlawed fugitives now dwelt 
beneath the roof of Madame Bouquey. Her chief embarrassment 
was to procure them food: so great was the scarcity which then 
prevailed, that the municipality only allowed her one pound of bread 
a day. Potatoes, and a supply of dried beans, accordingly consti- 
tuted the chief food of her guests. They slept till twelve, in order 
to spare a breakfast. A vegetable soup formed their dinner. To- 
wards twilight the Girondists left their retreat, and gathered round 
their kind protectress, who prepared for them as palatable a supper 
as prudence would allow her to procure, and which she seldom 
touched herself in order to leave the more for them. Whilst she 
behaved thus generously, the country was filled with emissaries of 
the Jacobins, who, conscious that the Girondists were concealed in 
the vicinity, uttered the most fearful threats against them and those 
by whom they were sheltered. From her connexion with Guadet, 
Madame Bouquey was especially exposed to their persecutions and 
domiciliary visits. Although surrounded by persons whom the 
presence of the Girondists in her house inspired with the most lively 
alarm, she remained undismayed. " Let the inquisitors come 4 " she 
gaily said to her proteges; " I am easy, provided it is not you who 
receive them. All I fear is, that they may arrest me, and then what 
will become of you?" She kept them a month; but at the end of 
that time the importunities of her friends prevailed, and, with many 
tears and bitter regrets, she parted from her guests. Of the seven 
men she had sheltered, six died, on the scaffold ; only one, Louvet, 
lived to narrate the romantic history of his misfortunes and escape. 
When Guadet was arrested in the house of his father, Madame 
Bouquey became involved in his ruin and that of his family. Indig- 
nant at the insulting questions of the president of the tribunal before 
which she- appeared, she passionately exclaimed: "Yes, monsters! 
— Beasts of prey? if humanity, if family affection deserve punish- 
ment in your opinion, we all merit death." The generous and un- 
daunted woman died with two of the men she had endeavoured to 
save. 



DEVOTEDNESS OF WOMAN. 321 

When friendship and pity could inspire such deep and perilous 
devotedness in the heart of woman, love and conjugal affection might 
well lead her to brave not less heroically the anger of the oppres- 
sors. A woman of Lyons, hearing that her husband was on the 
point of being arrested, prevailed upon him, by her passionate en- 
treaties, to effect his escape whilst she remained, clad in his attire, 
to take his place. A Madame Lefort, in one of the western depart- 
ments, acted with like devotion. The representative of the people, 
discovering the cheat she had practised upon him, turned towards 
her, wrathfully exclaiming: "Woman! what have you done?" 
" My duty — do thine," was her brief reply. A citizen of Riom was 
transferred to Paris for judgment, and consequently for condemna- 
tion. His wife, though not included in the accusation against him, 
persisted in accompanying him : they were both guillotined together. 
Another lady, not being allowed by the gaolers to go with her hus- 
band to the tribunal whither he was summoned, killed herself on the 
spot. 

In every rank of life, and with little regard to political feelings, 
women adopted the most ingenious stratagems to save beloved objects, 
and often the merest strangers. A prisoner fell ill, and was sent to 
the hospital of Bourdeaux. The Sister of Charity whose task it was 
to attend upon him beheld him with interest, and sorrowfully re- 
flected that his recovery would only be the signal for his death. 
Resolved to save his life, even at the risk of her own, she bade her 
patient, who was nearly well, feign convulsions, and then death. 
He obeyed ; the nun hastily threw a sheet over his face, and, when 
the doctor came to pay his daily visit, informed him that the patient 
had that moment expired. He believed her, without ascertaining 
the truth of her assertion. In the evening the supposed corpse was 
conveyed to the dissecting-room. A surgeon in the confidence of 
the Sister of Charity provided the prisoner with a proper disguise. 
He left the hospital undetected, and ere long gained the Spanish 
frontier. His disappearance was perceived on the following day. 
The nun was questioned and confessed the truth. Her candour 
excited so much admiration and surprise, that her life was spared. 
It is also true that the Sisters of Charity were found so necessary in 
the hospitals of the republic, as to be seldom molested, even when 
they refused to take the constitutional oath. 

M. Causse, a rich merchant of Toulouse, was apprehended and 
speedily condemned for the crime of being one of the wealthiest 
citizens of his native city. The day being far advanced when his 
sentence was pronounced, the execution was deferred until the fol- 
lowing mornins;. M. Causse had a beautiful mistress, whom he had 
formerly loaded with gifts. On learning his condemnation, she sold 
all she possessed and bought an empty house adjoining the prison. 



322 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

There, in that one night, with the help of a faithful female servant, 
she effected an opening through the wall to the cell where she knew 
that her lover was confined. The prisons were badly guarded, M. 
Causse seconded her efforts, and ere long he stood, a free man, in 
the empty house ; where he found a military disguise, provided by 
his thoughtful mistress. Long before his escape was suspected, he 
had reached, with her, a place of security, in which they waited the 
close of the Reign of Terror. 

Incidents as strange, improbable, and romantic as those of the 
wildest fiction abounded in this period of revolutionary history. The 
long and heroic contests of the Vendeans and the Chouans against 
the whole republic, possess the hazardous adventure and tone of 
wild daring which would have delighted a Scott or a Fenimore 
Cooper ; and in deeply thrilling interest they might indeed well bear 
a comparison with the wars of the Puritans and Jacobites of Scot- 
land, or with the strange and varied scenes, stratagems, and chances 
of border life, and hair-breadth escapes of the wild Indian warfare. 
Women were implicated in this memorable struggle, but without 
taking in it a leading or striking part. Those whose feelings and 
affections — the great political guides of woman — led them to sympa- 
thize with the Vendeans, either perished with them or underwent 
almost unequalled sufferings, endured with calm and heroic resigna- 
tion. It is possible, however, that the royalist ladies, who have left 
such interesting memoirs on this remarkable period of French his- 
tory, might have acted a far more conspicuous part in the events 
which they narrate, if the great movement, though headed by nobles, 
had not been essentially a popular one in its origin. 

La Vendee is a wide and secluded district, situated in the west of 
France, bounded by the Loire on one side, and by the Atlantic Ocean 
on the other. The chief portion of this tract of land is known by 
the name of Le Bocage. It is covered with low hills, narrow val- 
leys, and innumerable streams, which traverse it in every direction. 
These streams, the chief paths of the country, are generally over- 
hung and concealed with the low trees growing on their banks ; this 
peculiarity has given its name to the Bocage. The character of the 
Vendeans is simple, honest, truthful, and yet reserved. " Deeds, 
not words," was their practical maxim : no men promised less and 
effected more. They were a hardy, frugal race, patient though 
energetic, prejudiced, deeply religious, and averse to change. From 
the commencement they disliked the Revolution. They already en- 
joyed as much freedom and happiness as they desired. They had 
not been bowed down by ages of oppression ; they had no wrongs 
to avenge, no. brand of slavery to efface, no thought of past or pre- 
sent abasement to awaken glorious aspirations towards liberty. They 
cherished the feudal system, so deeply and justly abhorred in the 



CHARACTER OF THE VENDEANS. 323 

rest of France. It existed with them in all its primitive and patri- 
archal simplicity. The nobles treated their- tenants with justice and 
kindness; the clergy were moral and pure. Secluded from the rest 
of France, contented, though ignorant and poor, the peasants neither 
knew nor understood the deep social evils which had brought on the 
Revolution. They saw with abhorrence and disgust their own priests 
expelled, in order to make room for the constitutional clergymen; 
the execution of the king and the laws of conscription added to their 
indignation. Exasperated at the thought of being compelled to fight 
for a cause they hated, they rose in arms to fight — but against it. 
They urged their landlords to lead them to the field. The nobles, 
though they hoped nothing from this partial movement, thought 
themselves bound in honour not to recede. They joined and headed 
the insurrection. It soon acquired formidable proportions, and at 
one time threatened the existence of the Republic itself. 

The women of La Vendee shared in all the religious enthusiasm 
and attachment to past customs which had armed their brothers and 
husbands. In many villages they kept guard whilst the men were 
away fighting ; they sometimes made prisoners, which they brought 
in triumph to the commanding officers. Several women took an ac- 
tive share in this eminently national struggle. Two sisters, of four- 
teen and. fifteen years of age, distinguished themselves by their 
courage. On the day before the town of Thouars was taken by the 
Vendeans, a soldier came up to General Lescure, confided to him 
that she was a girl in man's attire, and, asking him for a pair of 
shoes, assured him that when he had seen her fight on the following 
day, he would not think of sending her away. She kept her word, 
and fought constantly under the eyes of M. de Lescure. " General," 
she cried out to him several times in the heat of the battle, " you 
shall not pass me. I shall always be nearer to the Blues than you 
will." The name of Blues was that which the Vendeans gave to 
the Republicans ; who in return called them " Brigands." The 
daring girl received a wound in the hand, but she merely held it up, 
saying to the general : " This is nothing." Her recklessness proved 
fatal to her : dashing forwards amongst the combatants, she perished 
in the thickest of the fight. 

Of the peasant women who thus took up arms, only one survived 
the civil war ; her real name was Jeanne Bordereau ; she was gene- 
rally called L' 'Angevin, from the province of Anjou, whence she 
came. £he fought to avenge the death of her father killed by the 
republicans, and performed prodigies of daring bravery. Several 
noble and royalist ladies displayed similar heroism. Madame de 
Beauglie, attired like an amazon, a carbine in her hand, commanded 
thirty cavaliers, equipped and salaried at her expense, on the coast 
of La Vendee. The young and handsome Madame du Fief distin- 



324 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

guished herself in the army of Charrette ; who, without joining the 
great body of the insurgents, kept up a brisk and separate warfare 
on the sea-shore. " In the fight of La Baziliere, 1794," observes a 
historian of this eventful war, " Charrette beheld her, with surprise, 
rush on the foe, and give an example to the bravest." Madame du 
Fief survived the war in which she had taken so active a part, and, 
on the restoration of the Bourbons, was warmly thanked and eulo- 
gised for her services by one of the princes of the blood. Such ama- 
zonian ladies ranked, however, among the exceptions to the general 
rule. The Vendean women of every rank thought far more of 
giving examples of courageous patience, than of indulging in a daring 
heroism foreign to their nature, and unsuited to their physical weak- 
ness. The pious and truly heroic Mademoiselle de la Rochefou-- 
cauld, who accompanied her father in the army of Charrette, and in 
that reckless general's most perilous expeditions, kept up the courage 
of the whole army by her unexampled patience and resignation. 
The memoirs of Madame de la Rochejaquelein and Madame de Bon- 
champs show how unremitting and severe were the sufferings of the 
royalist ladies. 

Besides the women who fought in the army, and those who, by 
their own gentle example, exhorted their friends to bear everything 
patiently, there was a third class, who, if they did not direct military 
operations, at least considerably aided the counsels of the Vendean 
chiefs by their address and devotedness. Mademoiselle Hamelin, of 
Rennes, consecrated herself to the perilous task of favouring the 
royalist correspondence. She crossed republican posts in disguise, 
procured intelligence, carried orders through a hostile country filled 
with spies, and often braved the dangers of a long journey and almost 
certain death, in order to negotiate for the Vendeans with the Eng- 
lish agents on the coast. 

The protracted war of the Chouans in Brittany, although carried 
on later and somewhat differently from that of La Vendee, was also 
a royalist and religious struggle against republican principles. It 
was first organized by the daring Marquis de la Rouarie, noted for 
his profligacy, his duels, and his wild adventures. Accompanied by 
his beautiful and devoted relative, Therese Moelien, to whom he was 
himself ardently attached, he went all over Brittany, braving every 
danger, in order to establish a vast and secret conspiracy. The 
authorization given by the Count of Artois to La Rouarie was carried 
by Therese, sewed in her riding habit ; and it is said that, by her 
eloquence and beauty, she won not a i"e\v partisans to her lover's 
cause. The Marquis de la Rouarie died before his project could be 
carried into execution. On the eve of his death he gave to Therese 
a list of the conspirators; she burned it, and was shortly afterwards 



REPUBLICAN CRUELTIES. 325 

executed, with a whole family who had buried in their garden im- 
portant papers relative to the conspiracy. 

Though thus checked in its commencement, the Chouannerie sub- 
sequently rallied, and emulated the daring heroism, but not always 
the generosity, of the Vendean warfare. Though prodigies of valour 
were performed by the insurgent peasants, and though, as in the 
Combat de Dol, women often rallied them back to victory, when 
they yielded to republican forces, they were so greatly inferior in 
numbers to their opponents, that it is their success, and not the de- 
feat by which it was followed, which should astonish. The conse- 
quences of that defeat were most deplorable. The cruelties of the 
republican generals, and of the proconsuls in Brittany and in the 
Vendee, almost surpass belief. Never was humanity so deeply out- 
raged : the massacres of Lyons do not equal the noyades or drown- 
ings of Nantes. If hundreds were immolated by Fouche and Collot 
d'Herbois, thousands perished by the orders of Carrier. Women 
and children were shot publicly. The Vendean General d'Elbee 
was taken by the republicans during the course of the war. His 
wife refused to leave him : he was shot before her eyes : a similar 
fate awaited her on the following day. Difference of opinion did not 
always imply a difference of fate. The republican general Queti- 
neau was obliged to surrender to the Vendeans. They wanted him 
to join their cause; he refused, and requested to be liberated on 
parole, in order to justify himself from the imputation of treachery 
which had been cast, upon him. The Vendean generals warned 
Quetineau of the danger he would thus incur ; but his wife, who 
preferred her husband's honour to his safety, induced him to persist 
in his resolve. The request was granted : General Quetineau came 
to Paris, and was condemned to death, unheeded and unheard. The 
broken-hearted widow asked and obtained leave to share his fate. 

Although they chiefly consisted of republicans, the inhabitants of 
Nantes suffered as much as the royalists, Bretons, and Vendeans, 
from the fury and cruelty of Carrier. Their devoted city became 
the theatre of the most fearful and revolting executions. The Ven- 
dean peasants of both sexes met death with the courageous firmness 
of their race. The women seemed to think less of death itself than 
of the means of dying with decency : a consolation not often granted 
by their cynical tyrants. They generally went to death singing an 
old traditional hymn, of which the burden was that "those who die 
for God go to paradise." The calm resignation with which these 
victims of their fervent faith suffered martyrdom, was termed fanati- 
cism by their irritated oppressors. It was " fanaticism" which made 
delicately reared women walk twelve leagues, through a dreary, 
marshy country, in a severe winter, in order to hear mass said in 
one of those retired places where the nonjuring priests had taken 

28 



326 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

refuge: " fanaticism" which caused Marie Papin, a young Vendean 
peasant, to let herself be slowly massacred by republican soldiers 
sooner than reveal the hiding-place of the fugitive " brigands," to 
whom she was taking food by stealth ! Then, thanks to Heaven, 
such fanaticism was not rare : heroism, undaunted courage, and the 
love of better things than life and happiness, were not found on the 
side of the republic alone. Never was the Catholic religion, in all 
its pomp and glory, so purely, so devoutly followed, as when obedi- 
ence to its laws was death : never were the holy duties of hospitality 
so devotedly performed as when discovery would have doomed both 
host and guest to one inevitable fate. Those who talk merely of the 
debasing power of oppression, know not how it can elevate, how it 
can purify, the noble struggling soul; how it can awaken resistance, 
stern, unyielding, and which still triumphs over chains and death, 
even when to the narrow-minded it seems most subdued. If tyrants 
knew these things, they might, perchance, seek other methods of 
tyranny. It is when brute force seems most strong that the moral 
power of the weak first stands revealed. A nun named sister Saint 
Monica, but to whom the poor had given the name of their " mother," 
was brought before one of the revolutionary tribunals in the west of 
France. The Reign of Terror was at its height, and no counsel 
would undertake her defence. " Thou must be very guilty indeed," 
said the President, banteringly, " since no one will even defend 
thee." " If I have no defender on earth," replied the gentle nun, 
looking upwards, " I have at least one in heaven." At the foot of 
the guillotine she gave to a few poor women, who followed her weep- 
ingly, all the garments she could spare, and refused, even under the 
knife, to save her life by taking the constitutional oath. 

It would be difficult to enumerate the women who, throughout all 
France, braved and suffered death, for having, in spite of every pro- 
hibition, sheltered or assisted the proscribed priests. Four sisters 
were guillotined together at Dijon for this offence ; and two sisters, 
Mademoiselles Barberon, school-mistresses at Orleans, were sent to 
Paris for trial, with the priest whom they had vainly endeavoured to 
save. They both went to the scaffold glorying in their action, and 
singing in a loud and clear tone the 96th Psalm. M. Billiais. his 
wife, and their two daughters, were condemned at Nantes for a 
similar action. The father was executed in January, 1794, Madame 
and Mademoiselles Billiais were not guillotined until the month of 
March. The mother walked firmly to death between her two daugh- 
ters: their veils were thrown back, and displayed the calm serenity 
of their features. One of the two maidens was remarkably beautiful. 
A republican officer beheld her on the way to the guillotine. Filled 
with pity, and with a sudden feeling of love, he stepped up to her, 
and offered to save her life if she would become his wife. She re- 



AGATHE DE LA ROCHEJAQUELEIN. 327 

fused, preferring death with her mother and her sister. The three 
women embraced one another tenderly at the foot of the scaffold. 
Fervent maternal affection rising with the dread hour, made Madame 
Billiais ask to be the last guillotined, in order that her daughters 
might not behold her death ! Many Vendean women might have 
escaped their fate, had they not preferred death to dishonour. The 
noyades, of which Carrier had borrowed the idea from Nero, con- 
sisted in having a certain number of victims crowded on a boat fur- 
nished with a large trap. On a given signal the trap opened, and 
the Loire received the condemned. These noyades were repeated 
until the waters of the river became corrupted, and spread pestilence 
in the city. Madame de Jourdain and her three daughters were 
taken, with a considerable number of other persons, to one of these 
boats. The beauty of one of the three girls attracted the notice of 
a soldier, who offered to save her on dishonourable conditions. In 
order to escape his pressing solicitations, she threw herself from the 
boat into the river. She fell on a heap of corpses, which prevented 
her from drowning. She called out for aid, but aid to die, and not 
to live. " Help me," she cried, " I have not enough water !" The 
executioners, who were always present to prevent victims from 
escaping, pushed her in farther to a deeper spot. 

The conduct of the younsr and beautiful Mademoiselle de Cuis- 
sard, who was led to death with an old female relative, offers 
another remarkable proof of female purity and unselfish devotedness. 
She was on the boat at Nantes with her friend, both patiently 
awaiting their fate, when a republican officer, enamoured of the 
young girl, whom he wished to save, spent three hours, kneeling at 
her feet, and passionately entreating her to give him the power of 
delivering her by becoming his wife. He was young, handsome, 
and his manners and feelings were evidently those of a gentleman. 
Moved, in spite of herself, at his persistency, Mademoiselle de Cuis- 
sard asked, "If I marry you can you also save my friend?' 
" Alas !" sadly replied the officer, " I can only save her whom 1 
shall marry." "Then, farewell," replied the heroic girl ; and from 
that moment all his entreaties proved vain : she perished with her 
relative. Instances are, however, recorded in which without any 
compromise of womanly honour or dignity, life was preserved, and 
not wantonly sacrificed. The most barbarous have moments of 
shame and remorse. 

Deceived by a false amnesty promised to the Vendeans, Agathe 
de la Rochejaquelein came to Nantes. Instead of thus securing her 
freedom, she was immediately arrested and taken before Lamberty, 
the friend and accomplice of Carrier. He was pleased with her ap- 
pearance. " Are you afraid, brigande ?" he asked. " No, general," 
she replied. " Then when you feel fear, send for Lamberty." 



328 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

When Agathe apprehended that she was to be included in the noy- 
ades, she accordingly sent word to her protector. He took her out 
alone with him on the Loire in a little boat, with a trap, which he 
had obtained from Carrier for private murders. He wished to take 
a dishonourable advantage of her position, and, when she refused to 
listen to him, threatened to drown her. She ran to the side of the 
boat, and showed him that she was ready to die. Struck with ad- 
miration at her courage, Lamberty exclaimed : " You are a brave 
girl! I will save you." He accordingly concealed her in the bot- 
tom of the boat, which he hid amongst some rushes by the river 
side. For eight days and nights she lay there unperceived, but 
daily witnessing the executions of the condemned. A man of 
Nantes, named Sullivan, drew her from this perilous hiding-place, 
and took her home, in order to pacify his wife by saving a prisoner. 
This man had betrayed his own brother to the republicans ; the 
horror his wife had conceived for him since then preyed upon his 
mind, and he wished to appease her, and expiate his crime by per- 
forming some good deed. To how much unknown good did the 
gentle and purifying influence of woman lead in those evil days ! The 
second retreat of Mademoiselle de la Rochejaquelein was soon dis- 
covered ; Lamberty was accused of the heinous crime of saving 
women from the noyades, and a friend of his, named Robin, took 
out Agathe on the river, in order to poniard her. She threw her- 
self at his feet, and the charm of a pure, winning nature again pre- 
vailed. Robin, instead of killing her, brought her back and hid 
her : she was, however, again detected in her place of concealment, 
and this time was only saved by the close of the Reign of Terror. 

The town of Arras, then under the dominion of an apostate 
priest named Lebon, beheld scenes as fearful met with courage as 
undaunted. Lebon converted the guillotine into a permanent insti- 
tution. The executioner sat at his table and shared his orgies. 
When his friend was engaged in the duties of his office, Lebon sat 
on a balcony, from which he viewed the executions on the place be- 
low, whilst a band, engaged for that purpose, played the Marseillaise 
or the Ca Ira. Lebon frequently interrupted the executions, in 
order to prolong the tortures of the condemned, by reading to them 
the bulletin of the victories gained by the republican armies. He 
did so once when two young Englishwomen were ascending the 
scaffold. " Aristocrats like you," said he, addressing them, " must 
hear in their last moments the triumph of our armies." One of 
the two ladies, named Madame Plunkett, turned towards him, and 
exclaimed indignantly: "Monster! we, though women, shall die 
courageously, but thou shalt die like a coward." The excess of 
tyranny, in which Lebon indulged with impunity, may be conjec- 
tured from the following circumstance. He was coming home one 



MADAME DE CONDORCET. 329 

evening along the silent streets of Arras, reflecting on evil news he 
had received from the army, when he heard a young girl singing in 
one of the private houses. Irritated at this token of freedom and 
joy, he caused her to be apprehended and sent to the guillotine, with 
her mother, on the following day. A woman, with a child in her 
arms, saw them pass on to death. " Thou art not more innocent 
than that poor young lady," said she, addressing the child with an 
irresistible burst of pity and indignation. The remark was over- 
heard, and reported to Lebon, who, without further judgment, sent 
the compassionate woman to share the fate of the victim she had so 
imprudently pitied. 

When the Terror reigned thus inexorably in the provinces, it 
may be imagined that it did not spare Paris ; the seat of that dread- 
ful tyranny which threatened to lay the country waste, and consign 
her most noble and most gifted children to the grave. But this op- 
pressive power, which developed so much unsuspected evil in the 
human heart, also brought out the latent good. Madame le Jay, the 
grasping and apparently selfish mistress of Mirabeau, devoted her- 
self to almost certain death, in order to save proscribed men. After 
the 31st of May, Condorcet, implicated in the ruin of the Girondists, 
found an asylum in the house of an obscure widow, named Ma- 
dame Vernet. He remained with her eight months, during which 
his kind hostess constantly exerted herself to divert his melancholy, 
and sometimes playfully addressed him in little couplets, in which 
she exhorted him to bear his fate patiently. " I have never written 
any verses," said he to her one day, " but I think you will induce 
me to make the attempt." It was whilst residing beneath her roof 
that he composed an epistle, addressed to his wife, in which occur 
the two fine lines already quoted.* The beautiful Madame de Con- 
dorcet was now reduced to the necessity of painting the portraits of 
the Terrorists in order to obtain a livelihood. It was only by stealth 
that she could visit her husband in his retreat. His thoughts and 
feelings were almost entirely absorbed by her and their only child, 
a little girl five years of age. The ardent revolutionist could never 
mention the names of his wife and daughter without shedding tears. 
In the Avis cVun Pere Proscrit, which he addressed to his daughter, 
he spoke to her with great tenderness of her mother's affection and 
superior mind. 

On learning the decree of the convention, which outlawed and 
included the proscribed and those who gave them a shelter in the 
same fate, Condorcet said to his hostess, " I must leave you : were 
1 discovered here, this decree would place you beyond the pale of 
the law." " But not beyond that of humanity," replied this noble 

* Page 308. 
28* 



330 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

and undaunted woman. So urgent was she in her entreaties for him 
to remain, that Condorcet was obliged to escape from her house by 
stealth. He wandered for a few days about the country, but was 
soon discovered and imprisoned. He committed suicide with poison, 
which he always kept about him for that purpose. His wife was in- 
carcerated soon after his death. Her first task, when the Terror 
had ceased, was to collect and publish the writings Condorcet had 
composed during his seclusion. She survived him many years, 
living in poverty and retirement, and faithful to the last to the re- 
publican principles of her husband. 

It was this devoted zeal of woman which irritated the tyrants of 
France, because it every day snatched new victims from their grasp. 
When Louvet, after leaving Madame Bouquey, reached Paris through 
innumerable perils, he was saved from certain death by the address 
and courage of the beautiful Lodoi'ska, who afterwards became his 
wife. None of his friends would receive him ; he had no papers, 
no passport, no place in which he could lie concealed; the scaffold 
seemed his only destiny. Unaided, but supported by love, Lodoi'ska 
built him a hiding-place in a remote room, and so skilfully executed 
that it could never be detected by mere eyesight. Here, thanks to 
that asylum, he remained undiscovered, until a favourable opportu- 
nity occurred for him to make his escape to the frontiers. 

" When the proscribed of every party met after the 9th of Ther- 
midor," observes Charles de Lacretelle, " the name of woman was 
covered with universal benedictions." 

One man alone, the cold, sceptical ennuye Saint Lambert, seemed 
t» dissent from this general praise. Shortly after the cessation of 
the Terror, he read to a circle of ladies a work in which he dealt 
somewhat severely with their sex. They reminded him of all that 
woman had done to soften the Reign of Terror. " Well then, mes- 
dames," he replied with a sneer, " I shall add to this chapter the 
remark, that women devoted themselves when it was the fashion to 
do so." So spoke, in his old age, the man who had been loved with 
so much fervour and constancy by Madame du Chatelet and Madame 
d'Houdetot. 

The opinion of Louvet on this subject is of more worth. He had 
tasted both the generosity and the harshness of woman. If Madame 
Bouquey had sheltered him, another woman (a friend of Guadet, by 
whom her honour and fortune had formerly been saved) refused 
them a glass of water when Louvet sank in a swoon at her door ! 
Yet, notwithstanding this, it is thus Louvet speaks : " Amidst all 
this degradation, it is consoling to declare, that even in France there 
still exist beings worthy of liberty. We found them especially 
amongst persons of that sex called frivolous and timid. It was from 



PRISONS DURING THE REIGN OF TERROR. 331 

women that we received the most touching attentions, and that cou- 
rageous aid a generous compassion knows not how to refuse to un- 
merited misfortunes." 

May women long deserve such noble praise ! 



CHAPTER IX. 

Woman in the Prisons. 

Never, perhaps, did the capital of a civilized country offer a 
spectacle like that which the prisons of Paris presented during the 
Reign of Terror. Whilst fierce and fanatic men, often repulsively 
coarse, ruled the destinies of France, individuals most noble by 
birth, distinguished by station, or eminent by talent, were herded 
together in prisons, palaces, and private hotels, and thence daily 
sent in batches {fournees) to the guillotine. The number of incar- 
cerated suspects at one time amounted to 1 1 ,400. 

Princes of the blood, generals, statesmen, orators, handsome and 
fashionable ladies, nuns, men of letters, priests, actors, and dignita- 
ries of the church, met in these abodes of death, as ardently tena- 
cious of former passions and privileges as they were carelessly 
indifferent to the present. It was only in a few external circum- 
stances that this social world differed from the gay and frivolous 
circles of the eighteenth century. Women, regaining all the power 
so ruthlessly broken in their hands by the great drama of the Re- 
volution, once more gave the tone, and ruled coteries. The mania 
for sentiment had somewhat gone by ; brilliant and caustic wit, 
literary discussions and Epicurean philosophy, recalled the palmy 
days and sway of Mesdames de Tencin and du Deffand. The im- 
prisoned aristocracy of France laughed at the revolutionary scaf- 
fold ; as under royal rule, it had laughed at lettres de cachet and 
the Bastille : it trifled with death, as it was its wont to trifle with 
everything : the same daring and frivolous race whom no suffering 
could subdue or render grave. There was in reality as much pride 
as levity in this careless bearing : it was the last haughty defiance 
of the conquered noble to his plebeian oppressor; and more plainly 
than with words did it to the exasperated terrorists seem to say, 
" Send us death : do your worst ; we can still brave both your 
power and you." 

Certain knowledge of the fate to which the suspects were doomed, 
their great number, the difficulty of escape, and the rare instances 
in which it was attempted by captives to whom France had become 



332 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

a vast prison-house, rendered the gaolers easy and tolerant. The 
prisoners were permitted to meet freely, and to regulate their amuse- 
ments and occupations. They generally elected presidents, who 
distributed the daily tasks, and saw that they were properly per- 
formed. Some lit the fires, others swept the rooms and made the 
beds ; a few prepared their own food ; the wealthy had their meals 
brought in to them from their houses, or sent in by a restaurateur; 
and large sums were spent by the captives in procuring for them- 
selves the delicacies of the season. The poor were generally fed at 
the expense of their richer companions : the gaolers recommended 
needy sans-culottes to the care of opulent aristocrats, who generously 
provided for them. The wealth of a ci-devant was thus ascertained 
by the number of prisoners he maintained ; and as much pride was 
displayed in this singular luxury as had been shown in the lacqueys, 
horses, and mistresses, a noble formerly kept, chiefly for purposes 
of ostentation. The same spirit which had governed the saloons of 
the old regime ruled in the prisons of the new one. Aristocratic 
distinctions were rigorously kept up. The nobles addressed one 
another by their respective titles : unless in the presence of the 
gaolers, when they took care to use the consecrated terms of citoyen 
and citoyenne. They formed circles, from which the roturiers, with 
whom they might the very next day ascend the guillotine, were 
sedulously excluded. All the formalities of good breeding were 
carefully. preserved : gentlemen gave up their seats, of which there 
was a scarcity, to the ladies, and stood, entertaining them gallantly; 
polite invitations to dinner were sent from Corridor Frimaire to Cor- 
ridor Floreal. 

There was even no dearth of amusements in this strange world. 
It was generally in the afternoon when the prisoners met ; when the 
court-yards of the Luxembourg, of Saint-Lazare, and several other 
prisons, exhibited almost as much gaiety as the most fashion- 
able places of Parisian resort. In the palace of the Luxembourg, 
then converted into a prison, the captives often assembled in an 
ante-chamber commanding a view of the fine gardens below, where 
their friends and relatives daily gathered to obtain a distant glimpse 
of those they loved. The severity of the sentinels generally deprived 
the prisoners of this consolation ; but grief or care had little power 
over this light- hearted race. The scene in the ante-chamber was 
animated and gay : ladies brought their work, old nobles sat apart 
in earnest conversation, while the young walked up and down the 
room, or gathered into laughing groups. At one end of the gallery 
three chairs were disposed so as to represent a guillotine ; this was 
a game invented by the ladies of the Luxembourg. Surrounded by 
a circle of spectators, who blamed or applauded them according to 
their success, they imitated faithfully the last moments of the con- 



FEARLESSNESS OF DEATH. 333 

demned ; and, like the Roman gladiators, thus studied how to die 
gracefully. A similar game was invented and followed by the 
Girondists in the Conciergerie. 

These images of death seemed to enhance the brief pleasures of 
the captives : it was because they were to die that they would enjoy 
existence to the last. Never were the voluptuous precepts of 
Horace more faithfully obeyed : the mock guillotine threw no damp 
on the mirthful scene around. Appointments were made for music 
and card-parties in the evening, for lectures on astronomy, che- 
mistry, and other sciences, to be delivered by captive savants, or 
for literary readings, epigrams, bouts-rimes, and acted charades. 
The ladies dressed for these soirees as carefully as their reduced 
wardrobes allowed, the gentlemen were assiduous and polite ; open 
flirtations were carried on, and sincere affections often sprang up in 
these dens of terror. Some of the ladies, who had formerly ruled 
the gay world, now swayed in a prison their light sceptre. Sad 
Madame de Condorcet, in widow's weeds, cared little for her former 
power; but the witty and caustic Madame de Coigny, the foe of 
Cardinal de Brienne and Marie-Antoinette, failed not to exercise her 
capricious rule in Saint-Lazare. Near her appeared her daughter, 
whose grace and loveliness inspired the poet Andre Chenier with a 
fervent passion, which he expressed in the exquisite verses entitled 
" La Jeune Captive." He perished the day before the fall of 
Robespierre ; Mademoiselle de Coigny survived the Reign of 
Terror. 

The deaths of those around them interfered little with the plea- 
sures of the prisoners : they were not selfishly indifferent; they only 
knew that their own turn would soon come; that to be guillotined 
was the common fate. Without this seemingly reckless spirit, how 
could they have endured the hours of their captivity — for horrible 
it was in reality — beheld their friends and relatives daily torn from 
them to be led to death, and yet have lived on and betrayed no 
weakness? It was generally when the prisoners were assembled 
together, when the scene of gaiety was at its height, when projects 
were making for the morrow, and the love of a day was being in- 
dulged, that some drunken gaoler came to read the long list of vie- 
tims. A deep, hushed silence immediately prevailed : it seemed as 
though on the approach of this herald of death, the breathing of life 
had suddenly become suspended. As he slowly spelled over every 
name, those who were thus summoned to trial — and they knew that 
trial signified death — calmly bade their friends farewell, and came 
forward. Others immediately took their places in the game or con- 
versation left unfinished by their departure. A few delayed in order 
to write, on the table where they had partaken of their last repast, 
some poetical adieu. The most beautiful and touching of these 



334 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

effusions is that which the poet Roucher, the beloved friend of Made- 
moiselle de Lespinasse, addressed to his wife and children, on send- 
ing them his portrait drawn by a fellow-prisoner : 

" Ne vous etonnez point objets cheris et doux, 
Si quelque air de tristesse obscurcit mon visage, 
Lorsqu'une-main savante dessina eette image, 
L'echafaud m'attendait et je songeais a vous." 

The ignorance of the gaolers, the indifference, and often the gene- 
rosity of the prisoners, led to constant mistakes of identity. A young 
man of twenty was guillotined "for having a son among the emi- 
gres." The old dowager Duchess of Biron, and her daughter-in- 
law, the widow of the duke, formerly Count of Lauzun, and who has 
already been introduced in these pages as the Countess Amelie, 
perished instead of their steward. The two ladies were confined to- 
gether in the Luxembourg; the gaoler received a list, containing the 
name of Biron : "But there are two of them," said he to the gen- 
darme, waiting with the cart. " Then bring them both." The list 
had come at a later hour than usual ; the old marechale was at 
supper; she calmly concluded her meal whilst the other prisoners 
were preparing ; when all was ready, she took up her book of devo- 
tion, and departed cheerfully. She was guillotined, with her daughter- 
in-law, the next day. A similar error gave the Countess of Maille 
an opportunity of displaying her nobleness of mind. On hearing the 
name of Maille called out by the gaoler, she stepped forth from the 
ranks of the prisoners, but observed, that though the surname which 
had been read was hers, the Christian name prefixed to it was not. 
She was asked to designate the person to whom it referred; silence 
was her only reply. On being pressed to say, at least, where that 
person — her sister-in-law — might be found, she answered, "I do not 
desire death, but I prefer it a thousand times to the shame of saving 
myself at the expense of anoiher. I am ready to follow you." 
Struck with her magnanimity, the commissary who had come to 
fetch the prisoners away, spared her. This forbearance saved her 
life. 

When gaolers, gendarmes, and prisoners, all were gone, when the 
rolling of the cart which bore the latter to death had subsided in the 
distance, the prisoners recovered from their momentary gravity. 
The light jest, the caustic repartee, the gay trifling were resumed, 
and the hum of conversation once more filled the hall, or the court- 
yard, whichever it might be. Few regrets were given to the de- 
parted ; those who had been spared to-day knew not whether their 
hour might not come on the morrow. After the introduction of the 
republican calendar, the tenth of every Decade was consecrated to 
repose ; no trials or executions took place on Decadi. When the 



RESPITE DURING THE DECADE DAYS. 335 

prisoners, therefore, reached the day on which even the guillotine 
rested, they knew that they had at least twenty-four hours more to 
live. Years of life were never hailed with more joy than was this 
brief respite ; throughout all the prisons of Paris Decadi was kept 
as a day of festivity and gladness; as another resting-place between 
life and the scaffold. 

At no epoch, during the whole of the eighteenth century, was 
female influence so clearly displayed, as at this period in the prisons, 
and over the aspect of prison life. The levity, the recklessness, the 
aim at effect, the heroism with which the prisoners met their fate, 
were not only distinctive attributes of the national character, but also 
traits strongly illustrating the influence which woman had ever exer- 
cised, and which she possessed over it still. This power was, as for- 
merly, one of mingled sjood and evil : if it often led men to meet death 
with unbecoming levity, it also made them encounter it in a brave 
and undaunted mood. The peculiar heroism of woman — endurance — 
seemed imparted by her to all those near whom she came. This 
courage was at the same time theatrical and sincere. Women who 
asked Fouquier Tinville for death, provided themselves wilh rouge, 
in order not to look pale on the scaffold : this precaution was often 
adopted by prisoners of both sexes. Other ladies kept awake at 
night, lest, in case they were suddenly called to trial, they should 
betray any weakness. To suffer with true, calm courage, was not 
enough : there was scorn of tricotteuses and insulting Jacobins to 
brave, on the way to the guillotine ; inquiring looks of fellow- 
prisoners to meet; a part to act before all. 

This haughty levity w r as not, however, the only feature of female 
influence in the prisons. Many pure-minded women, who had kept 
themselves free from the corruption of the age, had found in holy 
knowledge truer lessons of death than those to be derived from the 
game of the guillotine. Calm, resigned, affecting not more courage 
than their hearts could feel, they awed even professed sceptics into 
veneration. With words of gentle and eloquent persuasion, the 
widow of the Count of Clermont Tonnere subdued the proud spirit 
of the philosopher La Harpe. Convinced by her arguments and 
example, he became a fervent and sincere Christian, remaining so 
until his death, which did not occur until several years afterwards. 
The young and pious Countess of Noailles was generally called the 
angel of the prison. None of her fellow-captives could behold or 
approach her without emotion and respect. In her deep humility, 
she saw nothing of this. She was tried and condemned. Some 
one urged her to take some repose. " How can one sleep on the 
eve of eternity ?" she replied. And she spent in vigil and prayer 
the last night of a life as pure as it had been brief. Whilst the 
worldly-minded gave themselves up to whatever dissipation their 



336 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

gloomy place of sojourn could afford, the piously inclined assembled 
apart to pray. It was at four in the afternoon, the hour of the exe- 
cutions, that they met together to read the solemn prayers for the 
dying. In the course of the evening, they met again to pray for the 
souls of the dead, according to the ritual of the Catholic Church. 
Youths and maidens scarcely verging from childhood knelt there by 
the side of gray-headed old age, listening silently to the exhortation of 
the priest — some doomed captive like them — and who, whilst remind- 
ing them of those that were gone, failed not to bid them prepare for 
their own approaching fate. These religious rites, strictly forbidden 
to the free, were not interdicted by the gaolers to their captives. 
" We let him live," said Fouquier Tinville, of the Abbe Emery, in- 
carcerated in the Conciergerie, " because, by his gentleness and good 
advice, he checks more murmurs and more tumult in our prisons, 
than we could with the help of the gendarmes and the guillotine." 

Thus, some with reckless levity, others with religious resignation, 
but all with courage, met their fate. The heroism of the women is 
universally acknowledged to have surpassed that of the men. The 
levity to which we have alluded did not exclude the highest and most 
noble qualities. Of all the women who perished during the Reign 
of Terror, one only, Madame du Barry, knew not how to die cou- 
rageously. She was safe in England, assisting the emigrated nobles, 
when she resolved to return to France, to possess herself of the 
treasures she had hidden at Luciennes ; without which she could not 
continue her generous task. She came, was betrayed by her 
favourite negro Zamore, taken before the tribunal, and condemned. 
Horror-struck at her fate, she wept bitterly on going to the guillo- 
tine, and passionately entreated the people to save her. Heedless of 
the example and remonstrances of those who were going to die with 
her, she continued to wring her hands and to bewail her fate ; she 
struggled with the executioner on reaching the scaffold, and filled 
the whole Place de la Revolution with agonizing shrieks. 

Would that manv had died thus : would that the scaffold had not 
become a stage for victims to perish with courage so silent and so 
stern, that the crowd below saw not the horror of their fate. If 
tears and lamentations, like those of this weak woman, had come 
from the carts which daily rolled along the streets, bearing their 
load of victims : if shrieks and cries for mercy like hers had re- 
sounded from the scaffold, then the terror would have been known 
for what it was, — a butchery : then it would not, it could not, have 
endured so long. But there seemed to exist a secret struggle be- 
tween the crowd and the condemned, as to who should be more 
relentless, and who more defying : beings most opposed in feeling 
and opinions, united all in the same instinctive and unbending con- 
tempt of death and their oppressors. 



OLYMPE DE GONGES. 337 

Nothing is more characteristic, in the aspect of the prisons of this 
period, than the rapid succession in which individuals of every rank 
of life, and every political creed, passed through them on their brief 
journey : all tending to the same bourne — the scaffold. 

Two days after the execution of Madame Roland, Olympe de 
Gonges — a woman far inferior to her in character and talent, but 
not without some political and literary notoriety — like her, left the 
Conciergerie for the guillotine. At the age of thirty-eight, when her 
beauty and the successes it had procured to her were both gone, 
Olympe de Gonges, took the title of " woman of letters," and 
published several dramatic and political works. Seized with what 
may be called a revolutionary fever of the times, she covered the 
walls of Paris with affiches signed with her name. Tt is asserted, 
though the fact may well be doubted, that Olympe was so illiterate 
as not to know even how to read, and to be compelled to dictate her 
compositions to various secretaries. Her writings bear traces of a 
facility bordering on improvisation. Bursts of real eloquence are 
disfigured by evident want of taste, extravagance, and absurdity ; 
but many of her reflections are just and sound, and show both ori- 
ginality and power. She wrote on almost every subject ; chiefly on 
the emancipation and political rights of women. Her views on the 
great events passing before her changed constantly. She violently 
opposed the king, and when he was brought to trial had the courage 
to propose to defend him : a task which fear had induced the cele- 
brated- counsel Target to decline. After the death of Louis XVI., 
Olympe de Gonges attached herself to the Girondists : the fall of 
this party exasperated her, and she attacked Marat, Robespierre, and 
the Jacobins, in the most daring manner. She was immediately ar- 
rested, and tried by the revolutionary tribunal. She defended her- 
self with courage and dignity ; but on hearing the verdict of the jury 
against her, her fortitude seemed to desert her, and she said, " My 
enemies shall not have the pleasure of seeing my blood shed : I am 
with child, and shall give a citoyen or citoyenne to the republic." 
This assertion was disbelieved at the time, and was ascertained to 
be false. On learning that her sentence would be carried into execu- 
tion, Olympe recovered her firmness : " Children of the fatherland," 
said she, from the guillotine to the crowd below, " you will avenge 
my death." 

Madame Roland and Olympe de Gonges were not solitary in- 
stances of women who perished, though noted for their attachment 
to the revolutionary principles. The amiable Madame Laviolette 
had not only embraced with passionate ardour the doctrines of an era 
which she considered one of freedom and happiness for humanity, 
but she also devoted herself to the care of the soldiers wounded in 
defending the frontiers of France. Falsely accused — for what mo- 

29 



338 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

tive is unknown — by her husband, she was brought before the tribu- 
nal of Paris, and soon condemned to death. She heard her sentence 
with feelings of relief : the bitter deceptions of her brief existence had 
rendered it odious to her. Calling one of the prisoners to her win- 
dow, she said to him, on the evening of her condemnation : "Look 
at me ; I am calm. Assure your friends that I shall die worthy of 
them." 

Victims more touching than those of political opinion were fre- 
quently incarcerated for some generous deed or act of womanly love. 
When old General Custine appeared before the tribunal, a young 
and beautiful woman might be seen sitting at his feet, sustaining his 
courage, and, by her calm devotedness, softening even the judges of 
that tribunal of blood. This lady was Madame de Custine, daugh- 
ter-in-law of the general ; by whom she had often been harshly 
treated in the days of his prosperity. The threats of those who had 
resolved upon the death of the general, and who dreaded her influ- 
ence, could not terrify her away. All her spare time was spent in 
visiting and soliciting the members of the tribunal, and of the Com- 
mittee of Public Safety. Her ardent zeal and presence of mind would 
have secured her father-in-law's acquittal, if it had then been possi- 
ble for a man once accused not to be condemned. Madame de 
Custine was very nearly meeting the fate of Madame de Lamballe, 
on the spot where that unfortunate princess had perished. She 
had left the hall where the trial of her relative took place, and was 
descending alone the steps of La Force; a silent crowd, of menacing 
aspect, gradually closed around her ; an exclamation, or even a 
token of fear, and she was lost : she bit her lips until the blood came, 
in order to prevent herself from turning pale. On her path was a 
hideous poissarde, with an infant in her arms : Madame de Custine 
paused and admired it. The woman understood her : " Take it," 
said she, presenting the child, " you will give it back to me below." 
Madame de Custine obeyed, and, protected by that shield, descended 
the steps in safety: when she had reached the street she returned the 
child to its mother, without daring to murmur thanks, which might 
have been dangerous to both. 

The condemnation and death of her father-in-law were not the 
last trials of this devoted woman. Her husband was soon afterwards 
thrown into prison. Hopeless of an acquittal, she planned his 
escape. For the sum of thirty thousand francs in gold, and a pen- 
sion of two thousand livres, a daughter of the jailer, named Louise, 
was to let the prisoner escape. Their measures were all taken, 
when M. de Custine learned that Louise, by thus aiding him, would 
incur the penalty of death. From that moment nothing could induce 
him to accede to the proposed plan. His wife wept and entreated 
him in vain. Louise knelt at his feet, offering to give up the reward 



EXECUTION OF FOURTEEN GIRLS. 339 

and follow him and Madame de Custine wherever they went ; he 
remained inflexible, still preferring death to the shame of saving his 
life at the expense of another. Scarcely had Madame de Custine 
become a widow, when she was in her turn thrown into prison ; but 
her beauty, her devotedness, and her misfortunes, had given her a 
friend amongst the Jacobins who happened to be brought in contact 
with her. A mason, named Jerome, resolved to save her. He 
had free access to Fouquier Tinville's office. Every day for six 
months he failed not once to place her act of accusation the last on 
the list. He thus saved her life. After the fall of Robespierre, 
Jerome was compelled to hide, and Madame de Custine was set at 
liberty. She fell ill, and Jerome, who knew it, sent her servant 
money wherewith to support her mistress and her child. Events 
subsequently enabled Madame de Custine to favour the escape of her 
benefactor from the kingdom. 

Such instances of generosity or kindness from the Terrorists 
were by no means rare. The author Bitanbe was treated with some 
leniency in his prison, because one of the turnkeys, who daily sent 
to the scaffold the prisoners he disliked, had read his tale of Joseph, 
which he said " made him weep." As the Reign of Terror pro- 
gressed, even the men by whom it had been established began to 
look upon their work with dread and horror. The executions daily 
assumed a more revolting character. Fourteen young girls, the 
eldest of whom was not eighteen years of age, were sent to the 
scaffold at once. Their crime was having- assisted at a ball given 
by their parents, the chief inhabitants of the town, when Verdun 
surrendered to the Prussians. For this the tribunal of Paris con- 
demned them to die. They were incarcerated in the Conciergerie, 
where their youth and modest beauty interested all the other prisoners 
in their favour. The manner in which they spent the last day of 
their life confirms a remark applicable to the whole female sex; who, 
during the Reign of Terror, thought far less of their fate than of the 
means by which it might be met with decency. Guided by this 
" ruling passion strong in death," the maidens of Verdun, on the eve 
of their execution, calmly prepared their garments for the morrow, 
so that they might be spared a blush even on the scaffold. They 
were conveyed all in one cart to the guillotine. A murmur of pity 
arose in the crowd as they passed through it, modest and beautiful 
in their white garments, as if attired for a festival. They died with 
a serenity more touching; than the sternest courage. The execution 
of these innocent victims'created a deep feeling of horror in the pri- 
son they had left. " On the day which followed their death," 
observes the prisoner Riouffe, " the court of the women looked like a 
garden which a storm has bereft of its fairest flowers." 



340 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

To a woman, pure, beautiful, and courageous, belongs the honour 
of the first protest raised against this infamous tyranny. The hand- 
some and eloquent Lucile Duplessis poured into the soul of her hus- 
band, Camille Desmoulins, the fervent sympathy with the oppressed, 
and the hatred of their tyrants, which burned in her own. It was to 
the wife whom he so tenderly loved that Camille owed death, and a 
fame more pure than he had yet won. Guilty of having, in the 
eloquent pages of the " Vieux Cordelier," proposed the substitution 
of a tribunal of clemency to one of blood, he was sent to the Luxem- 
bourg, to share the fate of those he had wished to save. On entering 
his prison, he exclaimed, with a sigh, " I die for having shed a few 
tears over the unhappy." During his brief captivity, he thought of 
nothing save Lucile and their child. He spent his days in writing 
her the most touching letters — which still exist, with the traces of 
his tears — and in watching her in the gardens below. After his con- 
demnation it was still of her fate that he thought: happy, even in his 
misery, not to suspect what that fate would be. He died clasping a 
lock of her hair, and uttering the name of Lucile. His blood still 
stained the revolutionaiy scaffold, when the prisoners whom he had 
left in the Conciergerie beheld his widow appear amongst them. 
Pale and drooping, but still surpassingly beautiful even in her ago- 
nizing sorrow, she looked like one bowed down by an overwhelming 
calamity, and to whom the grave alone can yield repose. The pri- 
soners gazed on her as she wandered over the prison with unsettled 
looks, or sat apart sad and desolate, and they felt that for her at least 
it would be well to die. Gentle to the last, notwithstanding the bitter- 
ness of her grief, she endeared herself to all. She shunned no one, 
but avoided consolation. She consorted chiefly with a young nun, 
who, on the opening of the revolution, had left her convent and mar- 
ried Hebert, the infamous author of the " Pere Duchesne." Before 
he perished himself, Camille Desmoulins had by his sarcasms ruined 
Hebert, and brought him to the scaffold. 

The widows of the two foes now met in the court-yard of the pri- 
son, and sitting down on the same stone, wept together over their 
misfortunes. The widow of Hebert foresaw her fate, but thought 
that Lucile Desmoulins, so innocent and so pure, could not be con- 
demned. "You are happy," she often said to her; '-there is no- 
thing against you : you will be acquitted." Lucile knew this was 
impossible : " They will kill me as they have killed him," was her 
answer; "let them: I know the blood of woman has never been 
shed in vain." She heard her condemnation with serenity, and, 
like most of the victims of that disastrous period, attired herself in 
white to go to the scaffold. She preserved a cheerful bearing, con- 
versing with her companions, and particularly with the widow of 



DUCHESS OP GRAMMONT. 341 

Hebert, as she went along. Her courage and her youthful beauty 
filled all those who gazed on her with admiration and sorrow. 
"How beautiful she looks ! what a pity!" were the exclamations 
which arose upon her path. At the foot of the scaffold she tenderly 
embraced the widow of Hebert, bade her other companions farewell, 
and submitted to her fate with meek resignation. A beautiful, 
touching victim of woman's holiest feelings, — compassion and love. 

The efforts Camille Desmoulins had made to stay the course of 
the Reign of Terror seemed only to accelerate its progress. Whole 
generations were swept away at once. The virtuous Malesherbes, 
then more than eighty years of age, the courageous defender of 
Louis XVI., the humane minister whose first act of power had been to 
deliver prisoners unjustly detained, was cast into prison, with his sister, 
his daughter, his son-in-law, his granddaughter, and her husband, M. 
de Chateaubriand, brother of the late celebrated author. The 
cheerful serenity of Malesherbes, and the devotedness of Madame de 
Rosambeau, his daughter, excited the admiration of all the prisoners 
in the Conciergerie, where this family were confined. Madame de 
Rosambeau seemed to have forgotten every earthly object save her 
aged father. As the family proceeded, with other prisoners, to the 
tribunal, they met M. de Sombreuil — who had been reincarcerated — 
leaning on the arm of his daughter. The first time this heroic girl 
had appeared before the other prisoners, every look became fixed 
upon her and filled with tears. On beholding her now, Madame de 
Rosambeau observed, — " You have had the glory of saving your 
father,- I shall have the consolation of dying with mine." 

Amongst those who shared the fate of the Malesherbes family, 
were two celebrated political antagonists, Chapelier and d'Esprenuil, 
and two ladies of the old noblesse, the Duchess of Grammont, 
sister of the minister Choiseul, and Madame du Chatelet, widow of 
the celebrated Madame du Chatelet's only son, who had been guillo- 
tined a few months before. When these two ladies appeared before 
the revolutionary tribunal, the haughty Madame de Grammont 
behaved with great firmness and courage. She was accused of 
having sent money and linen to the queen after the 10th of August ; 
she disdained to deny this honourable circumstance: "I will not 
purchase my life at the cost of an untruth," was her only justifica- 
tion. Madame du Chatelet, a calm, gentle woman, sought not to 
make any defence, but awaited her fate in silent submission. Reck- 
less of herself, Madame de Grammont thought only of her friend : 
" That you should seek my death," she passionately exclaimed, 
addressing her judges — " since I despise and hate you, since I 
would have roused all Europe against you, if I could — that you 
should send me to the scaffold, is only natural. But what did this 

29* 



342 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

angel," she added, pointing to her friend, "ever do to you? She, 
who always bore everything without complaint, and whose whole 
existence has been marked by actions of kindness and humanity ?" 
This courageous appeal proved vain ; but it was not thrown away 
on the memory of Madame de Grammont : that " Amazonian, fierce, 
haughty dame,"* over whose character this one little trait shed 
a noble and generous light. On the 22d of April, 1794, Males- 
herbes, his family, the Duchess of Grammont, Madame du Cha- 
telet, and several other individuals, fourteen in all, were conveyed 
in two carts to the place of execution. Madame de Rosambeau 
supported her father, near whom she was seated: she embraced 
him frequently, and, heedless of her own approaching end, wept 
over his fate. When the executioner parted them on the scaffold 
she passionately exclaimed, "Wretch! would you murder my 
father?" 

A few days after this barbarous execution, the Princess Elizabeth 
appeared before the revolutionary tribunal, and closed the list of 
royal victims. The almost unearthly serenity of her mind through 
every sorrow, her heavenly piety and calm loveliness, could not 
soften the tyrants of France. Free from ambition, from intrigue 
and weakness, she was stainless, even in the eyes of those who 
pronounced her condemnation. On the night of the 9th of May she 
was separated from her niece, and scarcely allowed time to bid her 
farewell. Her trial began at an early hour on the 10th. Twenty- 
four persons were tried with her ; amongst them was the whole 
family of Brienne : with the exception of the cardinal, who com- 
mitted suicide on being arrested. Madame de Montmorin and her 
son, and several courtiers and ladies of the aristocracy, were in- 
cluded in the act of accusation against Madame Elizabeth. " She 
need not complain," observed Fouquier Tinville, alluding to this 
circumstance; "surrounded by this faithful old noblesse she can, 
even at the foot of the guillotine, still fancy herself at Versailles." 
Madame Elizabeth answered her accusers with the calm dignity of 
her character. The aspect of death seemed to have made her 
resume the pride of rank, which she had always discarded in life. 
On being asked her name, she replied, " Elizabeth of France, sister 
of Louis XVI., and aunt of Louis XVII., your king." The judge 
called Louis XVI. a tyrant. An indignant flush overspread the 
features of the gentle princess. "If my brother had been a tyrant," 
she replied, " you would not be here ; nor should I be judged by 
you to-day." She heard her sentence without emotion, and serenely 
prepared herself for death. One of the young women condemned 

* Walpole. 



EXECUTION OF MADAME ELIZABETH. 343 

with her not being provided with a suitable covering for her bosom, 
Madame Elizabeth tore her own fichu in two, and gave her half. 
Such was the universal veneration she inspired, that when her hair 
was cut off, the persons condemned with her, and even the execu- 
tioners, took and shared it with one another, like some precious 
relic. 

Amongst those who accompanied the princess to the scaffold was 
the Marchioness Crussol d'Usez d'Amboise ; a weak, timorous wo- 
man, who could never sleep unless two waiting-women were in the 
same room with her, and whom the sight of a mouse or a spider 
threw into agonies of fear. But the aspect of death, instead of ter- 
rifying this frivolous being, made her display a singular amount of 
firmness and courage. Tn the cart which led her to execution, she 
only thought of testifying to the princess her respect and attach- 
ment. 

Madame Elizabeth, touched by this attention in such a moment, 
expressed to her the regret she felt at not being able to show her 
sense of her kindness. " If your royal highness would condescend 
to kiss me," said the marchioness, " I should think myself most 
happy." " Very willingly, marquise," replied Madame Elizabeth, 
and she embraced not only her but all the condemned ladies, as they 
passed her one by one before ascending the scaffold. Her turn did 
not come until twenty-four heads had fallen beneath the knife ; the 
executioner then appproached her, and, as her hands were bound, 
removed the handkerchief which covered her bosom. A deep blush 
suffused the features of the modest princess : " In the name of your 
mother !" she said, with much emotion, " cover me." The man 
silently obeyed, and, without further remonstrance, she ascended the 
ladder, and submitted to her fate. 

Of all the victims of the revolution, Madame Elizabeth was one of 
the most guiltless : her sole crime was the royal blood which flowed 
in her veins, and the devoted attachment she had ever felt for her 
unhappy brother. 

As the Reign of Terror drew to a close, it assumed a more gloomy 
and fearful character. The law of the 22d of Prairial denied de- 
fenders to the accused, and authorized the jury to convict without 
evidence ; the prisoners were treated with increased rigour : kind- 
hearted turnkeys were supplanted by men who had served as egor- 
geurs in the provinces ; captives were transferred from one prison to 
another, in order to break whatever social lies they might have 
formed ; they were no longer allowed to procure their own food, but 
were reduced to one wretched meal in the twenty-four hours. This 
repast, taken in common, was called the gamelle. Even the mode 
in which they were summoned to death invested their fate with new 
terrors. 



344 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

The sight of so many victims daily conveyed from the various 
prisons of Paris to that last fatal one — the Conciergerie — at length 
raised pity in the hearts of the people. To avoid this, the hour of 
removal was changed. The trampling of horses, and the heavy 
rolling wheels of the long, covered carts destined to convey them 
away, now roused the prisoners at. dead of night. They awoke with 
a start, and listened with beating hearts to the harsh voices of the 
turnkeys, angrily resounding through every gallery and corridor, as 
they summoned the devoted ones to rise for their last journey. Hus- 
bands were thus torn from their wives, mothers from their children, 
without the indulgence of a last farewell. A hundred and sixty-nine 
prisoners were taken away in one night, from the Luxembourg 
alone. It was not until the mournful procession had left, until the 
gloomy prison had once more relapsed into silence, that the sur- 
viving prisoners felt, with a sigh of relief, they had yet another day 
to live. 

The introduction of spies amongst them completed the misery of 
the prisoners. An unsuccessful attempt which Lucile Desmoulins 
had made to effect the liberation of her husband was taken as the 
proof of a vast conspiracy existing against the Republic in all the 
prisons. Informers, technically called moutons, were commissioned 
to detect this supposed plot, and make up lists of victims. Whenever 
Fouquier Tinville wanted what he termed a " new batch," a con- 
spiracy was invented. The presence of these spies, who were soon 
known by their insolence, checked that freedom of intercourse the 
prisoners had hitherto enjoyed. Amusements were abandoned ; all 
gaiety was gone ; the prisoners walked about their abode with care- 
worn aspect and looks of silent horror. . They anxiously waited for 
the papers, to read with avidity, not the news for which the busy 
world might care, — with these they had done, — but the long daily 
list of the guillotined. Their fate when they were transferred to the 
Conciergerie for condemnation was more gloomy still. They were 
there herded in infectious dungeons, still stained with the blood shed 
in the massacres of September, and built around the wide court- 
yard ; a portion of which had remained unpaved since the stones 
were taken up for the murdered dead to be buried on the spot where 
they had fallen. Towards three in the afternoon, the long proces- 
sion of the condemned descended from the tribunal, and passed, 
with a firm step and sedate bearing, beneath a long, gloomy vault, 
on either side of whieh stood rows of their fellow-prisoners, watching 
them with eager and morbid interest. Thirty-five members of the 
parliament of Paris, thirty-two farmers-general, and twenty-five 
merchants of Sedan, passed beneath that vault on their way to the 
scaffold. Seventy victims were sent to death at once, under the 



CATHERINE THEOS. 345 

pretence that they were all implicated in the imaginary conspiracy 
of Cecile Renand. This young girl called one morning on Robes- 
pierre, and asked to see him ; his landlady thought her manner sus- 
picious ; she caused her to be arrested, and a small knife was found 
in the basket she carried on her arm : she said that her object in 
asking to see Robespierre " was to see the shape of a tyrant." The 
knife found on her, and this reply, were taken as proofs of her 
design to assassinate the Dictator. Her parents, her brothers, old 
M. de Sombreuil, the family of Sainte Amaranthe, and other indivi- 
duals, sixty-nine in all, were involved in her ruin. Madame de 
Sainte Amaranthe was a witty and beautiful royalist lady, whose 
daughier, more beautiful stjll, married M. de Sartines. They had 
passed safely through the worst part of the Reign of Terror, gather- 
ins; around them whatever was left of the once brilliant Parisian 
world of fashion. The advice of a friend, and their own inclination, 
led them to court the intimacy of Robespierre, and to become 
initiated in the mystic sect of Catherine Theos ; which, from his 
manifest leaning towards religious principles, he was supposed to 
favour. 

Catherine Theos, " the mother of God," as she called herself, was 
a fanatic old woman, who, assisted by Dom Gerle, a monk of the 
Chartreuse, attempted to found a sect, and foretold the advent of a 
new Messiah. These visionaries and their disciples entertained the 
most profound respect for Robespierre. 

The committee of public safety had beheld with disgust the fete 
which Robespierre instituted in honour of the Supreme Being. The 
extravagant doctrines and strange ceremonies of Catherine Theos 
gave them an opportunity of covering him with ridicule. The old 
fanatic and her disciples were accordingly incarcerated, as accom- 
plices of Cecile Renaud, whom they had never seen. Robespierre, 
who had displayed towards Madame de Sainte Amaranthe and her 
daughter a courteous admiration, verging on friendship, protested, 
but in vain, against their arrest. Thej T endured their fate with 
courage and resignation. One day Madame de Sainte Amaranthe 
learned, falsely as it afterwards appeared, that M. de Sartines had 
been executed : going up to her daughter she said, " Your husband 
is no more ; we shall probably follow him to-morrow to the scaffold : 
no tears, — this is no time for softness, — we must prepare to meet 
with courage an inevitable fate." A day passed, and they were not 
summoned to the tribunal. At eleven o'clock on the following night, 
an usher entered her room, and told her she was wanted below : 
" And are we not wanted too 1" anxiously asked her son and daughter. 
" Certainly," was the reply. They threw themselves into the arms 
of their mother, exclaiming, in a transport of joy, " Then we shall 
all die together." 



346 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

They appeared before the tribunal on the following day. There 
they saw M. de Sartines, who still lived ; Ceeile Renault and her 
family, and M. de Sombreuil, saved in vain by his heroic daughter: 
old Catherine Theos had died in her prison. After a mock trial, the 
seventy victims were condemned. They were led to death in the 
red chemise of murderers. This garment, intended to disfigure the 
young and lovely women thus barbarously immolated, seemed, as 
in the case of Charlotte Corday, to heighten their beauty. Exaspe- 
rated at the courage with which they met their fate, Fouquier Tin- 
ville is said to have conceived the infamous project of causing future 
victims to be bled, and consequently weakened before execution. 
This idea was never carried into effect. Shortly after this fearful 
execution, sixteen nuns of Compiegne were guillotined for belonging 
to the sect of Catherine Theos, whom they had never even had an 
opportunity of seeing. A kind subterfuge of the municipal autho- 
rities of Compiegne had led them to sign, unconsciously, their adhe- 
rence to the constitutional oath. On learning this, the nuns wrote 
and signed a solemn retractation of what they considered a virtual 
apostacy. They were imprisoned, transferred to Paris, and placed 
in the Conciergerie for trial. At the bar of the tribunal their supe- 
rior generously endeavoured to save her sisters by taking on herself 
the sole responsibility of their acts ; but both the nuns and the judges 
exclaimed against this course. The victims heard their condemna- 
tion with serenity and joy. On the preceding day one of them, Ma- 
demoiselle de Crosy, had composed a parody of the Marseilles, in 
five verses, of which this is the first : — 

■ Livrons nos coeurs a 1 Allegresse 
Le jour de gloire est arrive, 
Loin de nous la moindre faiblesse 

Le glaive sanglant est leve, 
Preparons nous a la victoire ; 
Sous les drapeaux d'un Dieu mourant 
Que chacun marche en conquerant; 
Courons tous, volons a la gloire : 
Ranimons notre ardeur, 
Nos corps sont au seigneur ! 
Montons, 
Montons a l'echafaud et Dieu sera vainqueur. 

They were sent to the scaffold on the morning of the 17th of July. 
In the cart where they sat together they repeated the prayers for the 
dying, and sang the Te Deurti Laudamus ; heard only in the solemn 
festivals of the Church. The long white robes and veils of their 
order, their calm bearing and sacred hymns, their years, varying 
from blooming youth to gray old age, their resignation and inno- 
cence, created a deep feeling of compassion in the crowd. No cries, 



THE NUNS OF COMPEIGNE. 347 

no hootings rose upon their path ; a silence, deep and mournful, 
accompanied them to the guillotine. At the foot of the scaffold the 
nuns all repeated in a loud, clear tone, the vows for which they were 
going to die. They then began the hymn to the Holy Ghost, Veni 
Creator. Their superior had asked to die last, and the nuns passed 
before her as they ascended the ladder, still singing the solemn 
strain ; which was diminished, but not interrupted, with every fall of 
the knife. When fifteen heads were low, the aged superior delivered 
herself over to the executioner, and perished with the words of praise 
and joy still on her lips. 

Eight nuns confined in Port-Royal gave up life in the same heroic 
spirit. They were accused of having, in spite of the prohibitions to 
the contrary, continued to lead a conventional life. "If your laws," 
they replied, " forbid solitude, friendship, prayer, and deeds of 
charity, we confess that we have broken them." The president 
called them fanatics. " Fanatics," they answered, " are those that 
kill. We pray for our enemies." The president at first only 
threatened them with deportation, and asked them where they would 
like to go. They said that they knew no country so unhappy as 
France, none which so much needed their prayers, and all the con- 
solation it was in their power to give. " When people stay here, it 
is to die," he significantly replied. " Then let us die," was their 
unmoved answer. The interrogatory, always a mere matter of form, 
speedily concluded with their condemnation and death. 

Such instances of calm heroism, however admirable they might 
be, had ceased to astonish. The mere endurance of death was 
nothing : so great had the disregard of life become, that many 
women cried out Vive le Roi, merely to be sent to the guillotine. 
They found death preferable to the torture of living in a land daily 
stained with the crimes of the evil and the blood of the just. The 
Polish Princess of Lubomirska, the friend of the Girondists, seized 
with horror at the scenes she witnessed in her prison, wrote to Fou- 
quier Tinville to ask for death. It is needless to say the request 
was speedily granted. If fortitude in the last hours of life be a claim 
to fame, the sages and heroes who immortalized the past might well 
have envied the deaths of the most humble victims who perished 
then. Composed and serene amidst the hootings of the crowd, they 
seemed to repudiate life as unworthy of them; and, whilst yet 
standing on the threshold of erring humanity, they already appeared 
environed with the calm sanctity of death. 

Traits of touching and sublime devotedness, of superhuman cour- 
age inspired by love, illustrate the history of woman in the prisons 
of the Terror. Many women, like the attendant of Madame de 
Narbonne, asked to perish with the mistresses whose captivity they 



348 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

had willingly shared. Many, when they appeared before the tribu- 
nal, forgot their own fate in that of some beloved friend. Reckless 
of herself, the Marchioness of Armentieres defended and justified 
her friend the Princess of Chimay, with courageous though unavail- 
ing eloquence. Never was conjugal affection more touchingly dis- 
played than in the close of that age of immorality. The ex-minister 
Claviere, implicated in the ruin of the Girondists, committed suicide 
in the Conciergerie. His wife, on learning his fate, swallowed a 
slow poison, settled her affairs, and parted from her children, with a 
composure and resolve which the prayers and lamentations of those 
around her could not disturb. "I am going to join him," was her 
sole thought: a thought which changed into joy the bitterness of 
death. The young and beautiful Madame de Lavergne, holding her 
child in her arms, accompanied her aged and infirm husband to the 
tribunal, in the vain hope of softening the judges. On hearing him 
condemned, she rose from her seat, and cried out, " Vive le Roi !" 
This was death, and she knew it well. The feelings of the wife 
prevailed, for a moment only, over those of the mother. " Is there 
a mother here," she asked, turning round, " who will take care of 
my poor child?" " I will," replied a woman of the people. She 
stepped forward and took the child from its mother's arms. Madame 
de Lavergne, condemned without trial, was sent to the scaffold with 
her husband. Frequent executions had not, at that time, blunted 
the sensibilities of the crowd, and many voices cried out on her pas- 
sage, " Why is this 1 She has not deserved death !" " Friends, it 
was my fault," answered Madame de Lavergne, from the cart, " I 
would die with my husband." Mademoiselle Gattey, on hearing 
her brother condemned, also cried out, " Vive le Roi," in order to 
be sent to death with him ; but the judges, unwilling to gratify her, 
did not pronounce her condemnation until the following day. 

When old Marshal de Mouchy was apprehended, his wife calmly 
said, " Since my husband is arrested, I am arrested also." He was 
soon summoned before the tribunal. "Madame," said he to her, 
" it is the will of God ; you are a Christian woman, I need say no 
more." She persisted in accompanying him. " If her husband 
must appear," she observed, " then she must appear likewise." The 
aged pair stood together at the bar ; the marshal alone was con- 
demned. But when the public accuser made her remark this, Ma- 
dame de Mouchy replied in an unmoved tone, " Since my husband 
is condemned, then I am condemned also," and she entered the 
cart, and ascended the scaffold with him; faithful even unto death. 

The vounsf and handsome Madame de Bois-Be render had cou- 
rageously remained in France, whilst her husband emigrated. She 
hoped, by not leaving the country, to preserve her property to her 



MADAME DE BERENGER. 349 

family. She lived in great retirement, and remained for a long time 
ignorant of M. de Berenger's fate. Orders were at length issued 
for her apprehension. The gendarmes who came to arrest her pro- 
duced their warrant, authorizing them to seize on the person of 
" femme De Bois-Berenger, widow of De Bois-Berenger, executed 
for conspiracy." Seized with sudden horror, the unhappy woman 
sank down in a swoon at their feet. When she recovered, it was to 
utter a passionate protest of royalism. She was taken to the Con- 
ciergerie, where she found her father, M. de Malessy, her mother and 
her sister. The piety, resigned sweetness of temper, and beauty of 
these two amiable sisters, made one of their fellow-prisoners com- 
pare them to "angels ready to wing their flight for heaven." Ma- 
dame de Berenger became the nurse of all the sick women in the 
Concierge He. Her father fell ill, and partly owed his recovery to 
her devoted care. Her chief task was, however, to sustain Madame 
de Malessy's drooping courage. The unhappy woman looked on 
her two daughters with mute, despairing glances : a terror, which 
was not for her own fate, seemed to have taken exclusive possession 
of her soul. It was Madame de Berenger who watched over her 
with maternal solicitude, who deprived herself of food in order that 
she might not want, and who surrounded her with that tenderness 
of love which the devoted mother bestows upon her child. The 
whole family were summoned to the tribunal on the same day. 
Madame de Berenger was not at first included in the act of accusa- 
tion ; she wrung her hands, and wept bitterly at the prospect of life. 
When her own act of accusation came, she received it with transports 
of joy. M. de Malessy calmly heard the sentence which sent them 
to death. Mademoiselle de Malessy, turning towards him, inge- 
nuously observed : " My kind father, I shall keep so close to you, 
who are so honest and so good, that for your sake God will receive 
me, notwithstanding all my sins." Madame de Malessy burst into 
tears. " Be of good cheer," said Madame de Berenger, embracing 
her; " we shall all die together. You need have no regret : your 
family accompanies you, and your virtues will soon be rewarded in 
the sojourn of innocence and peace." As she returned with her 
mother, whom she was tenderly supporting, from the tribunal, Ma- 
dame de Berenger perceived, in the gallery where other prisoners 
awaited the moment of appearing before the judges, an old man who 
wept bitterly. "What!" said she, going up to him, "you are a 
man, and you weep !" Shamed by her arguments, and her serenity, 
he promised to accept death in a more becoming spirit. On reach- 
ing the room where the toilette of the condemned took place, Madame 
de Berenger cut off the hair of her parents and that of her sister, 
and then requested them to perform the same last office for her. 

30 



350 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

She supported and consoled her mother to the last. " Be of good 
cheer," she repeated ; " we all die together." 

Another lady, named Madame Malessy, equally distinguished her- 
self by her filial piety. Her mother, Madame de Lachabeaussiere, 
was imprisoned in Saint-Lazare for having concealed a proscribed 
man. Madame Malessy was then a captive in one of the provincial 
prisons. Notwithstanding her advanced state of pregnancy, she 
immediately asked to be transferred to Paris. The request was 
granted. But when, after a long journey, the devoted daughter 
reached Saint-Lazare, she found that she could not see her mother, 
who had been placed in secret confinement. Despair affected her 
reason. She sat for hours on the floor near the spot where Madame 
Lachabeaussiere was confined, repeating unceasingly, " My mother; 
my unhappy mother." Notwithstanding her insanity, she neglected 
no means of adding to her mother's comfort. The meals of pri- 
soners in secret confinement were often forgotten by the gaolers: she 
accordingly deprived herself of her own food, in order to have it 
conveyed to Madame de Lachabeaussiere; and from this task of 
filial love the threats, refusals, and insults of the gaolers could never 
deter her. These two interesting women survived the Reign of 
Terror, and Madame Malessy subsequently recovered her reason. 

Love found not less devoted martyrs than filial or conjugal affec- 
tion. M. Boyer and Madame C. conceived a passionate attachment 
for one another in the Conciergerie. Boyer was one day called be- 
fore the tribunal ; every look became riveted on his mistress ; she 
seemed calm, and merely went up to her room to write a letter. A 
friend intercepted the missive ; it was addressed to Fouquier Tin- 
ville, and contained a fervent confession of royalism. Not receiving 
any reply to this letter, she wrote another. " I know all," said she 
to the friends who concealed the papers from her. Seeing her 
courage, they revealed the truth to her. M. Boyer had been tried 
and executed. The whole of that day and of the following night 
she spent in her cell weeping alone, and reading over the letters she 
had formerly received from her lover. When morning came, she 
placed them near her heart, and attired herself with great elegance. 
She was at breakfast with the other prisoners, when the bell which 
announced the approach of the commissaries, who daily read the 
lists of death, rang loudly. " They are coming for me," she joy- 
fully exclaimed. "Farewell, my friends! Oh J lam so happy!" 
She cut off her hair, divided it amongst the prisoners, gave a few 
articles of jewellery to the women present, and proceeded to the 
tribunal with a light and happy step. When Fouquier Tinville 
asked her if she were the author of the letter he had received : 
" Yes, monster !" she passionately replied. On reaching the scaf- 



EWD OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 351 

fold, she merely exclaimed, " It is here that he perished," and she 
joyously delivered herself over to the executioner. 

The beautiful Princess of Monaco, the friend of Madame Necker 
and of the Countess Amelie, was one of the last victims of this 
reign of blood. When the agents of the Terrorists came to arrest 
her, she succeeded in effecting her escape, and in rinding a refuge 
in the house of a friend; but the dread of compromising her generous 
hostess induced her to leave this asylum. She was soon recaptured 
and thrown into prison. On being condemned by the tribunal she 
declared herself pregnant, in order to prolong her life : a subterfuge 
often resorted to by women similarly circumstanced. On the fol- 
lowing day, however, she blushed at the untruth she had told, and 
wrote to Fouquier Tinville to disavow it. She prepared for death . 
with great calmness, cut her hair off with a piece of broken glass, 
and asked her femme de chambre for some rouge, " in order," as 
she said, "that if she should turn pale no one might see it." As 
the princess passed in the court of the prison, she said to the priso- 
ners whom she saw there, "I go to death with the calmness of in- 
nocence, and wish you, from my soul, a better fate." She delivered 
a packet containing her hair to one of the turnkeys, beseeching him, 
in the most earnest manner, to deliver it to her children. One of 
the women, condemned to die with her, betrayed the greatest grief. 
The princess spent her last moments in endeavouring to console 
her. " Take courage, my dear friend," said she to her, " it is the 
guilty alone who ought to fear." She perished on the 9th of Ther- 
midor. On the 9th, the Reign of Terror ceased. 

For some time previously to this memorable event, a considerable 
degree of fear and anxiety had pervaded the prisons of Paris. The 
eleven thousand prisoners considered their fate as inevitable. Every 
day new victims were snatched from their ranks ; every day they 
heard in the streets the long lists of the guillotined. The life they 
led was so thoroughly wretched that they learned to look upon its 
close as a blessing. It was not, therefore, death itself they feared, 
but the manner in which death might come. Sinister words had 
been uttered by the Terrorists. " We must have an end," said one. 
" The prisons must be cleared," observed Henriot, in the court of 
the Luxembourg. From prison to prison there spread a rumour 
that the massacres of September were to be soon renewed. The 
prisoners had become reconciled to the guillotine; but the idea of the 
death-struggle between them and their murderers, filled them with 
unconquerable horror. They were no longer allowed to see the pa- 
pers ; they knew nothing therefore of the secret quarrel between Ro- 
bespierre and the committees he had governed so long. On the 
morning of the 9th, the tocsin began to ring ; the gaolers looked dark 



352 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

and threatening, and took away all knives and instruments of de- 
fence from their prisoners. Thus had the massacres of September 
begun. Confident that they were going to perish, the prisoners re- 
signed themselves to their fate. During the whole of the day the 
drum continued to beat, and the tocsin to toll. These sounds seemed 
more terrific still in the hushed silence of the prisons. The women 
had gathered together to kneel in fervent prayer; priests gave their 
last benediction to their companions, and, as a warning of their ap- 
proaching fate, prisoners repeated to one another: "Friends; we 
are now all ninety years old." At five in the afternoon the tumult 
in the streets, and the terror of the prisoners, reached their height. 
That some terrific struggle was then going on, and that the result 
of that struggle would be life or death for them, they knew. The 
decree against Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just, was shouted in 
the streets ; the distant signs of their relatives and friends, filled the 
captives with astonishment and uncertainty. Was this but a change 
of tyrants, or were they to hope indeed? 

At length missives and papers from without, purchased from the 
gaolers at their weight in gold, told the whole truth. Robespierre 
had fallen ! the Reign of Terror had ceased ! A delirious joy seized 
on the prisoners. They wept convulsively, and embraced one an- 
other with transport ; they mourned for the dead ; they returned 
thanks to God. A deliverance so unexpected, so miraculous, seemed 
incredible. But yesterday they were doomed ; to-day they were 
saved. They eagerly asked for details. How, through whom had 
this been done? Many rumours were afloat — one prevailed over 
the rest, " A woman," they were told, " a defenceless prisoner like 
themselves, but strong in the indomitable courage of a generous 
heart, had from her dungeon overthrown the tyrant." If there was 
exaggeration in this rumour, there was also much truth : the sur- 
passing beauty and heroism of Theresa Cabarrus mainly contributed 
to the fall of Robespierre. He fell ; and with him passed away, not 
merely the Reign of Terror, but also the dream of republican free- 
dom and greatness, which France had indulged in at the cost of so 
many guiltless lives. 



THERKSA CABARRUS. 353 



CHAPTER X. 

Theresa Cabarrus — Fall of Robespierre — Reaction — Past and Actual State of 
Society — Madame de Stael — Close. 

In almost all the conspiracies on record, a woman may be found 
to act a conspicuous part either as victim of wrongs that the conspi- 
rators seek to avenge, or as the presiding spirit from which they 
derive their inspiration. Women do not always stand on the side of 
democracy, or of popular movements : they are essentially conserva- 
tive, because conservatism is the strength and safety of their homes; 
but they also abhor tyrants and tyranny : less from reasoning or 
conviction, than from a fervent sympathy with the wronged and the 
oppressed. 

Such women as Madame Roland, who love freedom abstractedly 
for its own sake, and are ready to suffer and die for a political prin- 
ciple, are very rarely met with ; for one like her, there are a hun- 
dred like Lucile Desmoulines ; courageous and pitying women, 
whose political principles are written in their hearts, and who would 
rather perish with those they love than behold cruelty in cowardly 
silence. It is this feeling of compassion, innate in woman's nature, 
that will ever render her dangerous to tyrants and arbitrary power. 
She cannot, if she would, remain unmoved. She cannot suppress 
the indignant and passionate eloquence with which pity so seldom 
fails to inspire her : an eloquence not the less deep for being native 
and untaught. 

It was, perhaps, the active compassion thus manifested by women 
during the Reign of Terror, that rendered the oppressors so relent- 
less towards the whole of their sex ; as if they felt instinctively that 
the beings whose hearts were ever open to a generous and coura- 
geous pity, ranked of necessity amongst their most dangerous oppo- 
nents. It was, indeed, a woman who first gave the signal of a re- 
action ; and another woman, more fortunate but not more fearless, 
whose energy mainly contributed to the fall of Robespierre. 

This woman, the beautiful Theresa Cabarrus, is better known as 
Madame Tallien, who died Princess of Chimay. Her father, the 
Count of Cabarrus, was a French gentleman established in Spain, 
where he married a Spanish lady of great beauty. By her he had 
several children; amongst the rest Theresa, who was early united 
to a French magistrate named M. de Fontenay. Whilst the Terror 
reigned at Bourdeaux, this gentleman, then proceeding to Spain with 

30* 



354 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

his wife, was arrested and thrown into prison. Madame de Fon- 
tenay remained at Bourdeaux, in the hope of effecting her husband's 
liberation. She was then very young, and of such surpassing beauty 
that many of those who beheld her for the first time were unable to 
restrain an exclamation of wonder. Her person seemed to combine 
attractions the most opposed. The classic elegance of her figure, 
and the regular beauty of her features would have reminded the 
beholder of the pure outlines of some Greeian statue ; but for the 
pale Spanish complexion and hair, the eyes of intense darkness? 
which, with the voluptuous and languid grace that pervaded all her 
movements, betrayed the daughter of a still more fervid sun. To 
the irresistible charm of the south, she united the wit and elegance 
of the north. The expression of her glance, of her features, and es- 
pecially of her smile, is described as having; been one of mingled 
kindness and finesse. Love always blended in the admiration which 
she elicited; and, like all the women whose beauty is not that of 
form alone, it was her destiny to inspire passions as fatal as they 
were fervent. 

It was at Bourdeaux that Tallien first beheld Madame de Fontenay. 
He was then persecuting the Girondists in their native province, and 
fulfilling the stern orders of the Convention. Tallien was not natu- 
rally cruel — few are ; but he was void of all principle, and had 
voluntarily shared the responsibility of the deeds of September, and 
of every revolutionary excess. He no sooner beheld the lovely 
Dona Theresa than he became passionately enamoured. He was 
young, handsome, and all-powerful : Madame de Fontenay was frail 
enough to accept his homage. Her husband was liberated, and 
favoured in his retreat to Spain. Theresa remained behind, pro- 
cured a divorce, and when the space of time exacted by the French 
law had elapsed married Tallien. This latter event did not, how- 
ever, take place until after the 9th of Thermidor. In the mean time 
the beautiful Spaniard reigned, with her lover, over Bourdeaux. At- 
tired in a Grecian costume, which enhanced her wonderful beauty, 
she everywhere appeared in public with Tallien, carelessly leaning 
on his shoulder, in the attitude then given by sculptors and painters 
to the goddess of liberty. 

The mistress of the Proconsul seemed anxious to efface, by the 
use she made of her power, the source from which it came. Gene- 
rous and compassionate by nature, she beheld with horror the reign 
of the guillotine. Yielding to her gentle influence, Tallien became 
less cruel and relentless. Every day his beautiful mistress snatched 
new victims from the scaffold. From the moment that Madame de 
Fontenay possessed any influence in Bourdeaux, few perished : with 
the exception of the Girondists, whom Tallien did not dare to spare. 



THERESA CABARRUS. 355 

There was scarcely a family in the city but owed her the life of one 
of its members. When executions which he would not or could not 
forbid were to take place, Tallien carefully concealed all knowledge 
of them from his siren and pitying mistress. He knew her power 
and his own weakness too well not to fear yielding to her tears and 
gentle entreaties. A power which was never used but for acts of 
charity and goodness, was not likely to be very severely stigmatized, 
even by the most rigid. In the town which her lover ruled, and 
where, in appearance at least, the terror was to reign, Theresa Ca- 
barrus soon received the gentle and significant name of" Our Lady 
of Mercy!" 

The leniency of Tallien was known and condemned in Paris. He 
was recalled from his mission, and Theresa, who now took his 
name, was thrown into the prison of the Carmes, where so many 
priests had been massacred in September. Her lover could not 
succeed in procuring her liberation : she who had freed so many 
captives, and saved so many victims, now pined a prisoner in her 
turn, threatened with the axe and the scaffold. 

In her prison Madame Tallien met the pious and resigned Madame 
de Custine, the handsome and royalist Duchess of Aiguillon, and the 
lovely creole Josephine de Beauharnais, future Empress of France: 
she shared the apartment of the two last-mentioned ladies. There 
was but one room and one bed for three women of such different 
characters and destinies. Their names may still be found written 
side by side on the walls of their cell, and appear there with large 
red stains of blood left in September, 1792. Madame Tallien and 
the Duchess of Aiguillon were, in courage at least, kindred spirits ; 
but the weak and credulous Josephine wept unceasingly, and spent 
the greatest portion of her time in privately seeking, through the aid 
of a pack of cards, revelations of the future. This was the period 
of alarm in the prisons, when rumours of a new September were 
rife, and terrorists were heard to regret the insufficiency of their 
spies, and to dwell on the necessity of "inoculating" the prisons. 
The prospect of perishing in a midnight massacre excited more in- 
dignation than fear in the heroic soul of Madame Tallien. She felt 
herself reserved for a higher destiny : she longed to break at once 
the chain which held her captive, and bound all France in its iron 
links. The daring and generous thought of overthrowing a tyrannic 
power, was one well likely to seduce a spirit that loved to dwell on 
all that was great and striking in the eyes of mankind. From her 
prison she energetically urged Tallien to save her — to widen the 
breach between Robespierre and the committee of public safety, and 
to deliver France from the Reign of Terror. Tallien scarcely 
needed her words to urge him on to prompt and decisive action. He 



356 Woman in trance. 

was fully conscious of Theresa's danger and of his own ; for he be- 
longed to the class of men so much hated by the puritanic Robes- 
pierre, as having brought into the new regime all the corruption and 
profligacy of the old aristocracy. 

The causes which produced the 9th of Thermidor are now well 
known ; it was a division among the tyrants, not a reaction in 
favour of humanity. Those who overthrew Robespierre were the 
most relentless of the Terrorists : they never once intended to check 
the Reign of Terror itself. This thought may have entered the 
generous heart of Madame Tallicn : her lover thought only of the 
danger she ran, and of his own head, then much in peril. The 
considerations which induced his associates to act were fully as 
selfish. 

Robespierre has been, and will ever be, most diversely judged. 
He was certainly a man of strong principle, inflexible, severe, and 
self-denying : in many respects the Galvin of the French Revolution, 
applying to this world stern dogmas, such as the Genevese reformer 
dealt out for the next. If the regeneration of France from the sink 
of immorality into which she had fallen were only to be had at the 
cost of human life, Robespierre was willing to pay the price. A 
deistic democracy was the ideal of his existence: he was neither 
cruel nor immoral ; but he was cold, insensible, almost passionless, 
and a political pedant. For the same reason he was uncompromis- 
ing, relentless, and almost inaccessible to the pity that far more 
guilty men could feel. Their motives were hatred, thirst of blood, 
or revenge; his were centred in the triumph of his system: let that 
prevail, and he would not ask for one drop of blood. It is difficult 
to judge such characters fairly. They are too often viewed as 
remorseless tyrants, or as high-minded men. Those who saw only 
his actions abhorred him ; those who read his motives idolized 
Robespierre. Both were wrong. No man deserves praise whos3 
deeds and words fail to agree : no man should be blamed uncondi- 
tionally when it can be said of him that his motives were earnest 
and high. Robespierre was, perhaps, the most in earnest of the 
political men of his time. He is admirably characterized by the 
profound remark of Mirabeau, "That man will go far ; he believes 
everything he says." But though political fanaticism may, like 
the same excess in religion, seek its justification by pleading supera- 
bundance of faith, the human heart instinctively revolts against doc- 
trines that lead to such deeds. There are two species of fanatics ; 
those that kill and those that die. The former are abhorred, the 
latter are blessed and hailed as martyrs. There is in our own 
blood, freely poured forth for truth, a- regenerative virtue which the 
blood shed by our hand, though in the same holy cause, can never 



CHARACTER OF ROBESPIERRE. 357 

possess. Will posterity, for the sake of a political principle, ever 
forgive Robespierre the deaths of his best friends : of Camille Des- 
moulins and his wife, so remorselessly abandoned and sacrificed, 
lest, by saving them, he should compromise his power and with it 
the ideal of humanity towards which he tended. 

But, revolting as are even his best qualities, Robespierre still 
demands justice. Why throw upon him the sole responsibility of 
the Reign of Terror? The men who overthrew him were more 
cruel and more guilty. They favoured atheism and profligacy; he 
was severe in his morals, and religiously inclined. Let it not be 
forgotten that he risked his popularity and hastened his ruin in order 
to check the progress of Atheism, and cause the recognition of the 
Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul. He intended to 
arrest the progress of bloodshed. During the last months of the 
Terror, he carried on a secret struggle with that fearful "Committee 
of Public Safety," which provided Fouquier Tinville with victims. 
For six weeks before the 9th of Thermidor, he ceased to attend, or 
possess any influence over, its deliberations: yet it was during those 
• six weeks that the executions were most active ; that his friends the 
Sainte Amaranlhes, the sixty-nine companions of Cecile Renaud, 
and the sixteen nuns of Compiegne, were sent to the scaffold ; that 
Collot d'Herbois, one of those who worked his ruin, warned Fou- 
quier Tinville to manage so that a hundred and fifty heads at least 
might fall every day. When these men perceived that it was Robes- 
pierre's intention to sacrifice them, they hastened the crisis, and fore- 
stalled him. The most active, because the most in danger, was 
Tallien. There was every motive to lead him to precipitate the out- 
break : his own safety and that of the woman he adored. From the 
prison where she pined, the beautiful Theresa communicated her 
own energy to her lover; incessantly urging him to overthrow Robes- 
pierre. A few days before the 9th of Thermidor, she found means 
to write and send him the following letter: — "The Administrator of 
Police has just left me; he came to announce that to-morrow I go to 
the tribunal ; that is to say, to the scaffold. How different is this 
from the dream I had last night: Robespierre was no more, and the 

prisons were open But, thanks to your cowardice, no 

one in France will soon be found to realize that dream." Tallien 
answered. " Be as prudent as I shall be courageous, and keep 
yourself calm." 

The 9th Thermidor came : Robespierre was accused of aiming at 
dictatorship, forbidden to defend himself, outlawed, and on the 10th 
executed without trial. Twenty-two of his friends accompanied him 
to the scaffold. The curses of the people, who had never ceased to 
identify the reign of blood with his name, followed Robespierre to 



358 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

the guillotine. A woman broke through the crowd, clambered up 
the cart where he sat, and holding herself by one hand whilst she 
menaced him with the other, passionately exclaimed: "Monster! 
vomited out by hell itself, thou art punished now. It fills my heart 
with joy to see thee here." Robespierre roused from his stupor, — 
he was severely wounded, having attempted to commit suicide, — 
opened his eyes, and looked at her. " Go, wretch, that thou art !" 
she continued ; " go to the grave: go, and bear along with thee the 
curse of everv wife and mother.' 1 

The curse thus passionately pronounced has clung to the name of 
Robespierre. Had he overthrown the Committee instead of the 
Committee overthrowing him, the Reign of Terror would have 
ceased as soon, and he, though not less guilty, would have left 
another name. The Terrorists knew not what they had done, until 
the intoxicating joy of the people showed them that, Robespierre 
being gone, the tyranny upheld in his name must likewise depart. 
They prudently entered into the spirit of a reaction it was not in 
their power to control, and threw the whole odium of the blood 
which had been shed on Robespierre and his friends. Although the 
subsequent history of the Revolution offers abundant proof of their 
inhumanity, their interested assertions have been too readily be- 
lieved. 

The Terror ceased in Paris on the fall of Robespierre, because 
there public opinion prevailed ; but its reign continued in many of 
the provinces. In the town of Valenciennes alone sixty-seven 
victims perished for religious or political motives, from the 23d 
of September to the 13th of December, 1794. The religious per- 
secutions which Robespierre had sought to check, were resumed 
with unabated vigour. Several nuns of Valenciennes left France 
in the beginning of the Revolution, and established themselves 
at Mons, eight leagues from the frontier. When Valenciennes was 
taken by the Austrians, they returned to their native city. It 
fell once more into the power of the French : the nuns imprudently 
remained. They were soon taken before the revolutionary tribunal, 
and asked if they had ever emigrated. They might have escaped, 
by answering No: but they all preferred truth to life. On their 
confession of having left the country, they were accordingly con- 
demned and executed. Though thus imperfectly displayed in the 
provinces, the reaction was very strong in Paris. It manifested itself 
chiefly in the altered aspect of society. 

Never, perhaps, unless at the death of Louis XIV., had the French 
social world undergone such transitions as those which were figured 
by the political struggle of '89, the gloomy Terror, and the disorderly 
reaction of Thermidor. According to Madame de Stael, French 



MADAME DE GENLIS. 359 

society remained in all its splendour from 1788 to 1791. The po- 
litical discussions, which had not yet been changed into bitter quar- 
rels and heart-burning animosities, gave this brilliant world an in- 
terest hitherto unknown. Everything was full of animation and 
hope. As the Revolution progressed, party-spirit ran high, aristo- 
cratic society split into faction, and was broken for ever by the tide 
of emigration. Women had a great share in this important and ill- 
advised movement. The aristocratic ladies, who were the most 
vehement philosophers and liberal in theory, could not endure the 
actual progress of equality and loss of privilege by which it was 
accompanied. They urged their husbands, brothers, and lovers, to 
leave a country which so little understood its interests as to contemn 
its ancient nobility. When their friends demurred and represented 
the impolicy of such a step, the women sent them distaffs, with the 
contemptuous intimation that these were the only arms fit for them. 
Stung by these reproaches the young nobles left the land en 
masse. The women, little apprehensive of danger, remained behind. 
Those who tarried too long perished on the scaffold ; others, more 
fortunate, made their escape from the country, and filled the little 
court of the exiled princes with their intrigues and repinings. One 
old countess, addressing a circle of nobles, observed with bitter and 
vindictive triumph : " Messieurs, you richly deserve what has hap- 
pened to you. /foretold the ruin of the nobility from the moment 
I saw you abandoning women like us for girls of the third estate." 
The emigration favoured the revolutionary spirit in every sense ; it 
gave an access of importance and power to commoners, and threw 
the influence hitherto wielded by aristocratic ladies into the hands of 
women of that " third estate" so much contemned by the old count- 
ess. Though sadly reluctant to leave her beloved Paris, Madame 
de Stael departed at length for Coppet. Madame de Genlis, Madame 
de Condorcet, Madame de Coigny, Madame Roland, Lucile Des- 
moulins, and Mademoiselle Caudeille, successively possessed the 
power, now both political and social, which was so soon to pass 
away from their sex. The discredit which gradually fell on the 
Orleans party compelled Madame de Genlis to seek refuge with her 
pupils in the army of Dumouriez on the frontiers. Her husband, 
who had of late affected to call her " Madame Livre," remained 
behind, and perished with the Girondists. All the tact, address, and 
ambition of Madame de Genlis seconded the intriguing Dumouriez 
in the attempted treason by which that general sought to give to the 
young Duke of Chartres the crown he was not to obtain until thirty- 
seven years had elapsed. When the treason of Dumouriez was 
discovered, he fled in haste, accompanied by the prince. Madame 
de Genlis and the young princes found a refuge in Switzerland. 



360 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

They were after some time compelled to separate. Madame de 
Genlis wandered alone over all Europe, persecuted by the emigrated 
royalists, who abhorred her very name. She returned to France 
under the consulship of Napoleon, with a temper no little embittered 
by disappointed ambition, but with her intellect as active as ever. 
She wrote a few novels highly successful at the time, — well-nigh 
forgotten now. 

The rule of Mesdames de Coigny and de Condorcet- proved as 
transient. Madame Roland and Lucile Desmoulins paid with their 
blood their brief political sway. Mademoiselle Caudeille, a beautiful 
and accomplished actress, closely connected with the Girondist 
leaders, and with Dumouriez, escaped the general proscription ; 
though she was coarsely, and even ferociously assailed by Marat, in 
his Ami du Peuple. But after, and even before the death of Lucile 
Desmoulins, there was, properly speaking, no social world for woman 
to govern. Paris seemed transformed. Universal distrust checked 
all freedom of intercourse. No visits were paid or received. The 
theatres flourished, and were always full ; precisely because society 
was no more. Men took refuse from the danger which surrounded 
every home, in a place of public resort where none were bound to 
speak. The individuals who had belonged to the elegant society of 
the old regime, and who still remained in France, lived in a state of 
perpetual apprehension. The most extraordinary concessions were 
daily made to fear. The once pretty Madame du Marchais, now 
Madame D'Angivilliers, and advanced in years, resided in Versailles. 
In order not to be inscribed on the list of the suspects, she made a 
solemn offering to the popular society of Versailles of a splendid 
bust of Marat. She thus passed safely through the Reign of Terror. 
Fear often led to compliance more degrading still. The women of 
Lyons did not blush to wear earrings and brooches made in the 
shape of a guillotine ; little guillotines were given to children as toys 
to play with. One insane individual, in his fervent admiration for 
the instrument of death, offered to settle a pension upon it. It was 
in the midst of this universal dread, when the names of the inhabi- 
tants of every house were written on the doorway, in order that the 
tyrants might know where to find their victims ; when women were 
publicly chastised by the poissardes for refusing to wear the tricolor 
cockade, or not paying adoration to the manes of Marat ; when the 
kings and queens of playing cards were effaced as dangerous to re- 
publican institutions ; when the place Vendome, inhabited by finan- 
ciers, was depopulated, and on every hotel of the aristocratic fau- 
bourg Saint-Germain might be read the words " National Property ;" 
it was then that the people were ordered to rejoice, and hold a great 
fraternal banquet in the streets of Paris. Gaily ornamented tables 



RELIGIOUS INFLUENCE OF WOMEN. 361 

were spread out before each door. Every one brought down his 
fare, and joined it to that of his neighbour. The most uneasy en- 
deavoured to look delighted. One young girl, wearied of life, took 
the opportunity, at this fraternal banquet, to cry out " Vive le Roi." 

Abject fear was not the only feature of these times. There was 
also heroism as great and pure as has ever been recorded in history. 
A patriotic enthusiasm, which even the guillotine could not subdue, 
had seized on the whole nation at the approach of the foe. Two 
hundred and fifty-eight forges stood in Paris. Women sewed tents 
and coats for the soldiers ; the children scraped lint. The men dug 
up their cellars for saltpetre. Their wives carried up the earth, and 
threw it in heaps before the doors of their houses. The cry of "the 
land is in danger" had not been uttered or heard in vain. 

It was, however, on the frontiers that most heroism was displayed. 
There women fought side by side with their husbands ; not for glory, 
but to guard the sacredness of their home and native soil. The two 
sisters Fernig rank amongst the most remarkable and devoted of 
these heroines. Their father, a private gentleman of property, 
headed a troop of volunteers. His two eldest daughters, Felicite 
and Theophile, resolved to assume male attire, and watch privately 
over the safety of their parent. They did so for a long time unsus- 
pected, but they were at length detected by General Beurnonville, 
who reported their heroism to the convention. From that time they 
distinguished themselves by their daring valour in almost every en- 
gagement that took place. Felicite, at the risk of her life, once de- 
livered from the hands of the enemy a young and wounded officer, 
named Vanderwalen. He had seen her for a few moments only ; 
but, filled with gratitude and love, he looked for her throughout all 
Germany, where she had followed Dumouriez in his flight. He 
found her at length in Denmark, married her, and brought her to 
Brussels, where she lived with him and her sister. Theophile did 
not marry, and died young. " She has left," observes an eminent 
judge of such matters, " poems full of manly heroism and womanly 
feeling, and well worthy of accompanying her name to immor- 
tality." 

Whilst women thus shed their blood like men on the frontiers of 
the land, they sought to oppose their moral influence to the progress 
of atheism within. This was the time of the worship of the God- 
dess of Reason. Beautiful courtesans, voluptuously attired, were 
led in triumph to the principal churches, placed on the altars, and 
exposed to the supposed adoration of the crowd. The women always 
shrank with horror from these impious saturnalia. It was only by 
threats that Chaumette could induce Mademoiselle Maillard, the 
actress, to take the part of Goddess of Reason in the cathedral of 

31 



362 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

Notre Dame. Momoro compelled his handsome wife to receive the 
same degrading honours in Saint-Sulpice, where she is said to have 
fainted away with shame. A young girl of sixteen died with grief and 
horror at the impieties in which she had been compelled to partici- 
pate. It is not without reason that the church has bestowed upon 
woman the name of "the devout sex." There is a faith in her soul, 
over which reasoning, or the specious sophistry too often called such, 
has no power. She believes, because it is in her nature to look up 
to higher things than this world can give ; and she neither asks nor 
needs any proof beyond that in her own heart to tell her that God 
and Providence are not idle words of human invention. This moral 
and religious influence of woman considerably checked the progress 
of atheism and materialism in France. No inquisition and no laws 
could prevent religious mothers from, rearing up their children in the 
faith of God and the contempt of man's authority. 

It was chiefly to the religious principles he professed, that Robes- 
pierre owed the little circle of admiring women whom the atheistic 
Heberf and Chaumette ironically termed " the devotees of Robes- 
pierre." These ladies, who were often religious royalists, attached 
themselves to him with a sort of passion. Robespierre liked the 
society of elegant women. He was a man of cultivated manners, 
and shrank from the vulgarity affected by the other Terrorists. He 
often promised his cortege of female admirers to re-establish freedom 
of conscience and the supremacy of religious opinions. The fete of 
the Supreme Being was but a consequence of his principles. This 
solemn act has been blamed and ridiculed ; it is difficult to see why. 
Atheism had been formally established. The sacred name of the 
Divinity had been impiously blasphemed in the churches dedicated 
to his worship ; schoolmasters had even been forbidden to pronounce 
it before their pupils. The inscription, "Death is Eternal Sleep !" 
had been engraved over the entrance of every cemetery. Relatives 
could not bury their dead with the customary ceremonies, but were 
compelled to see them thrown into the earth with indecent familiarity 
and haste. The fanaticism which was displayed in the promulga- 
tion of atheism was as unrelenting as any which ever disgraced the 
quarrels of Christian sects. It was this stain that Robespierre wished 
to efface from the cause of the Revolution ; with which it must not 
be confounded. The fete of the " Etre Supreme" exasperated the 
Terrorists, and was hailed throughout France as the coming of a 
new era. The uninterrupted bloodshed by which it was followed 
effaced this impression. Few care to know that of that blood Robes- 
pierre was innocent : his name has gone down to posterity as the 
type of all the evil passions of democracy. Notwithstanding the 
discrepancy between his principles and the deeds he silently suffered 



OLYMPE DE GOUGES. 363 

to be enacted, the devotees of Robespierre remained faithful to him 
and to his cause. Several sacrificed their fortunes and their connex- 
ions to their attachment. One lady expiated her friendship for him 
by a tedious captivity. 

Women were, however, generally dissatisfied with the new part 
given them in society by the Revolution. They had little anticipated 
being reduced to comparative insignificance by the political action of 
men. Such, however, was now the case. " What," very justly 
asked Olympe de Gouges of the women of her time, — "what are 
the advantages you have derived from the Revolution? Slights and 
contempt more plainly displayed." It was thus: women had lost 
their old influence, and they had obtained nothing in return. Fierce 
political passions had arisen, strangely altering national manners. 
Elegance and chivalrous respect for ladies had vanished with the old 
aristocracy. The republican severity that the new rulers of France 
wished to introduce, threatened to curtail still further female privi- 
leges. Olympe de Gouges boldly asked for equality of the sexes : 
she made a few proselytes, and was covered with ridicule. 

It is often the fate of a good cause to suffer from the premature 
efforts made in its favour. That of woman may rank among the 
rest. It would be difficult to assert that the actual position of woman 
is what it ought to be; she is neither wholly independent, nor yet 
wholly protected. Political equality, granted to her in remote ages, 
amidst barbarous nations, and still existing in many savage tribes, 
is denied her in civilized society. Though often exposed to poverty 
and want, she is shut out from the wide field of exertion open to 
man. It is true she is no longer the mere domestic drudge she was 
once; she has risen in intellect and in power, and a lady's-maid is now 
more learned than many a princess of yore. There is no reason to 
suppose that women will not continue to progress with society itself. 
If they do not, it will be their own fault. When they have won 
their place, they will have it without effort, and by the natural course 
of events. Olympe de Gouges and her partisans were too impatient: 
they attempted to seize at once on that which time alone could be- 
stow : they sought, more imprudently still, to settle how the great 
change should take place, and to give laws to futurity. If there is 
one folly beyond all others in legislators, reformers, and theorists, 
it is the attempt to fasten their own ideas of truth and right on their 
descendants. The leading principle, when it happens to be a true 
one, posterity generally retains ; but the form, according to which 
that principle is promulgated, it seldom or ever adopts, because it is 
the form of a past age unsuited to present wisdom. Putting it aside, 
with a kindly smile at bygone presumption, posterity just chooses a 
path of its own. 



364 WOMAN IN FRANCE, 

Such were a few amongst the reasons which caused the failure of 
Olympe de Gouges. Had she been more gifted, she might have 
thrown a greater charm over her cause ; she could not have rendered 
it more successful. Time must do its own work. Women far infe- 
rior to Olympe took up the same strain when she was gone. A 
handsome actress, named Rose Lacombe, whom Chaumette called 
" dangerous and eloquent," soon headed the female clubs founded 
by Olympe de Gouges. Eloquent, but cynical in her language, 
Rose Lacombe acquired great ascendency over the degraded women 
who made insurrections, and disgraced the Convention by the cries 
and tumult they constantly raised during its sittings. Though inso- 
lent and tyrannical to a singular excess, Rose Lacombe was not 
cruel : she often interceded for victims ; but her power was limited, 
as may be concluded from the fact that two of her lovers were guil- 
lotined. When the female clubs were closed, in 1793, she sank into 
complete obscurity. The power of such women could not endure 
beyond the excesses from which it had arisen. It disappeared when 
the Reign of Terror vanished, and society resumed its rights. 

When the first feeling of astonishment created by the 9th of Ther- 
midor had subsided, French gaiety, which had prevailed in the pri- 
sons in spite of the guillotine, now trifled . as recklessly over the 
gloomy past. The share which Madame Tallien had in the fall of 
Robespierre was soon known and magnified: the enthusiasm felt for 
her displayed itself in the theatres, where she frequently appeared, 
by loud bursts of applause. She became the queen of Paris, and 
ruled gracefully over the most promiscuous society France had yet 
witnessed. Men of the lowest class, enriched by lucky speculations, 
rose into sudden importance; fervent royalists, who had vanished 
whilst the guillotine held sway, now suddenly came forth, as" if from 
underground. A good citizen had a valuable cook, an amnesty is 
proclaimed, and he suddenly discovers that he has been attended by 
a marchioness in disguise, who, to his infinite regret, now gives him 
warning; ladies who had turned shepherdesses for safety's sake, 
fearful lest they should be detected by the whiteness of their hands, 
resume their rank and aristocratic tone: disdaining not, however, 
to seek for influence through republican representatives of the people, 
who show themselves nothing loth to be sued by handsome* ci- 
devants. The grave old hotels of the Faubourg Saint Germain 
slowly begin to fill; finance reigns in the Chaussee d'Antin. The 
dead of the Reign of Terror are scarcely cold in their unanointed 
graves, when their friends give balls, at which none but near rela- 
tives of victims can dance. These " bals des victimes" have great 
success. The poor are starving, but the theatres thrive, and gaming 
tables are crowded in rich saloons. Society is so imperfectly re- 



MADAME TALLIEN AND THE TERRORISTS. 365 

established, that no private balls are given : they are all public, and 
to these even the most exclusive must go. Divorce has become fre- 
quent and easy. Women change their names with wonderful rapi- 
dity: attired in a voluptuous Grecian costume, with a red shawl, 
fashionable since the red chemise of Charlotte Corday, and hair 
cropped close " a la sacrifice," they throng the gardens of the Tui- 
leries. A freedom and familiarity of manner, unknown to the old 
regime, mark this new world: the language itself is altered: the ear 
has become too much accustomed to the style of the Halles. License 
is as strong as of old, but it is far more gross and offensive: profli- 
gate books abound. The revolutionary fever has subsided : blood 
is no longer shed, but corruption prevails: the nation has not bene- 
fited much by the change. 

It is over this world the beautiful Madame Tallien reigns. She 
is idolized by the young men, with hair plaited, and turned up a la 
victime, green cravat, and crape bound round the arm, who, with 
stout sticks in their hands, fill the Palais Royal, singing the Reveil 
du Peuple: these pass by the various names of Merveilleux, Incroy- 
ables, Muscadins, or Jeunesse Doree of Frenon. Frenon, once the 
most sanguinary of Terrorists, is now suddenly transformed into a 
vehement reactionary : the mission of this " golden youth" is to in- 
sult and oppress every gloomy-looking Terrorist he may meet in 
the street. Thus the victims of tyranny understand freedom, when 
their turn is come. Hidden partisans of the Girondists come forward 
every day: Louvet, now married to his Lodoiska, reappears in the 
Convention; but it is Tallien and the Thermidoriens who reign 
supreme. The old conventionalists who have aided in the over- 
throw of Robespierre begin to sigh, and think they might have done 
better. 

Madame Tallien employed all her tact in mollifying these sub- 
dued Mountaineers : " You are so good, with all your abruptness of 
manner," she soothingly observed to stern Legendre. " Your heart 
is so generous," she said to Merlin de Thionville. " You have 
become the Achilles of honest people," was the remark the siren 
addressed to the handsome and profligate Barras : ex-moble and ex- 
terrorist, now her devoted admirer, never calling her but Aspasia, 
and not unwilling, it is said, to play the part of Pericles. 

But these gentle arts did not succeed equally well with all. Some 
of the Terrorists consented to appear in Madame Tallien's drawing- 
room, and mingle with the fashionable assemblage gathered there ; 
but many held sternly aloof from the woman whom they con- 
temptuously called the Cabarrus, and attacked her in the Convention 
itself. Tallien was at length obliged to come forward to justify her, 
and publicly acknowledge her for his wife. In society the defence 

31* 



366 woman in France. 

of Madame Tallien was warmly taken by the Thermidorien army 
of young men, formed under her auspices and those of her friend, 
Josephine de Beauharnais. This army of Muscadins amounted to 
two or three thousand ; the young men who refused to join it were 
inevitably disgraced with all the women. Their exploits were at 
first confined to the breaking of Marat's busts in the public places ; 
increasing in boldness, they compelled the Jacobins to disperse, and 
shut up their famous club. The keys were brought to Madame 
Tallien, who, showing them in triumph to her friends, laughingly 
said, " You see it was not so difficult." 

The generous and humane influence of Madame Tallien, pre- 
vented the Parisian reaction from taking a sanguinary form ; but in 
the provinces, where her power did not extend, it assumed an aspect 
almost as revolting as that of the Reign of Terror. Terrorists were 
daily assassinated in the streets of Lyons : seventy prisoners were 
in one day massacred or burned in their prison : eighty perished at 
Marseilles. Similar scenes disgraced almost every town which had 
suffered under the previous tyranny. Societies known as the 
" Children of the Sun," or " Companies of Jesus," were organized 
throughout the south, for the purpose of plundering and killing the 
foes before whom all had cowered in the days of their power. 

As events progressed, the influence and popularity of Madame 
Tallien somewhat subsided. Tallien, leaving her in Paris, pro- 
ceeded to Brittany, and distinguished himself by his cruelty in the 
tragedy of Quiberon. "Oh! why was I not there?" exclaimed 
Madame Tallien, in despair at what her husband had done: she felt 
and knew that Tallien, harsh as he was, could never have resisted 
her entreaties. 

The Revolution was then in the last convulsions of its brief exis- 
tence. Royalist conspiracies and ultra-democratic movements mark- 
ed the last years of its being ; the government became weak and 
corrupt: its vigour and earnestness seemed gone with the Jacobins. 
Whatever may have been their errors or their crimes, they were, at 
least, the men of the Revolution. When they disappear from the 
scene, events seem to become insignificant and degraded, like the 
men at the head of affairs, until Bonaparte appears to open the his- 
tory of a new era. Barras, voluptuous, insolent, and despotic, one 
of the five directors who, since 1795, governed France, held a sort 
of court in the Luxembourg; another director, Lareveillere Lepeaux, 
attempted to establish a deistic faith, called Theophilanthropia, of 
which the principal observances were offerings of flowers to the 
Divinity ; a third director, Neufchateau, presided, with his wife, 
over a little literary circle. The few individuals who remained of 
the old society, looked on in this new state of things with disgust. 



MADAME DE STAEL. 367 

Even they were not what they once had been. Old Madame D'An- 
givilliers, attired in fashions thirty years old, gathered a few literary 
friends around her, and gave two dinners a week — one to her pro- 
fane acquaintances, and the other to her confessor — in a close room 
filled with flowers and essences, by which the guests were almost 
stifled. These little absurdities, joined to others not mentioned here, 
left the native goodness of her heart undisturbed. It was discovered 
at her death that she maintained no less than thirty-four families of 
Versailles. 

The only woman who could in reality represent the elegance and 
good-breeding of the past, united to the daring genius of the new 
era, was Madame de Stael. As soon as events permitted her, she 
left Coppet ; where, during the whole time of the Reign of Terror, 
she only wrote one work : an eloquent and unavailing defence of 
Marie-Antoinette. She came to Paris, and entered with ardour into 
the political contests of the times. Her saloon was thronged by the 
eminent men of every party ; two men partly owed their elevation 
to her influence : Talleyrand and Benjamin Constant. The ambi- 
tion of Madame de Stael was worthy of her generous character. 
She wished to consolidate the republican government by conciliating 
the parties at variance, and inducing them to act in concert. In 
this womanly task she unhappily failed. The Royalists would yield 
none of their hopes for the future; the Republicans scorned to pro- 
fess the least repentance of the past; the Directors remained aloof; 
the so-called Moderates showed themselves as irreconcilable as the 
rest. Whilst all parties thus persisted in their obstinacy, Bonaparte 
stepped forward, seized on the power, and crushed them, and the 
freedom which they had purchased with years of blood, but knew 
not how to preserve or defend. 

Next to intellectual and independent men, Bonaparte detested in- 
tellectual and independent women. He liked talent, but only such 
talent as he could control. Madame de Stael soon became odious 
to him. He especially resented the freedom of discussion, which 
she loved herself, and encouraged in all those who came near her. 
He wanted to consider literature and art as abstract principles, and 
felt irritated to perceive their close connexion with every question 
of the day. The attempt he made to silence Madame de Stael, 
shows how imperfectly Napoleon understood her high and indepen- 
dent character. " What does she want ?" he impatiently observed to 
one of her friends ; " will she have the two millions the state owes to 
her father 1 n " The question is not what I want," said Madame de 
Stael, when this was repeated to her, "but what I think." Their 
mutual enmity soon rose high. Napoleon compelled Madame de 
Stael to leave Paris and Parisian society, which she idolized ; but 



368 WOMAN IN FRANCE. 

he could not subdue her spirit; and in that long, and for him dis- 
graceful struggle, it was still the woman who triumphed. In the 
courts and select society of every land of her exile, Madame de 
Stael carried her resentment with her. Everywhere she eloquently 
declaimed against the despotism of Napoleon, or mercilessly ridi- 
culed the theatrical pageantry of his court. There were few im- 
portant epochs in his reign, when the emperor was not made to feel 
the power and sarcasms of the woman of genius whom he had so 
unjustly and imprudently contemned. 

With this woman, the greatest and most gifted in intellect her sex 
has yet produced, closed the social and political power of women in 
France, during the eighteenth century. Let us look back and see 
the part they enacted during that ever memorable age. Madame 
du Maine and the Cellamare conspiracy, voluptuous Madame de la 
Verrue, and intriguing Madame de Tencin, reappear before us with 
the profligate days of the regency : they add to its deep corruption; 
whilst, chastened by penitence, sorrowful Mademoiselle Aisse dies 
silently, asserting, though she knows it not, the undying strength of 
woman's faith and purity. The name of learned Madame du Cha- 
telet remains associated with that of Voltaire and his cold philosophy. 
Madame de la Popeliniere, graceful and elegant as she is, is only 
the protectress of that degraded art which suits a degraded age, 
when four sisters became the mistresses of a king. The haughty 
favourite, Madame de Pompadour, has no power beyond that politi- 
cal power she wrings from her lover. The philosophic Madame 
D'Epinay; the good-natured Madame Geoffrin; Madame du Deffand, 
selfish, caustic, and ennuyee; and impassioned Mademoiselle Les- 
pinasse. with so much that is generous and true in her erring nature, 
rule society under Louis XV. The abandoned old king dies; Louis 
XV[., young, pure, and weak, ascends the throne to reap the thorns 
his grandfather has sown. Women still govern society : Marie- 
Antoinette, the gay and imprudent queen, the clever and supple 
Madame de Genlis, Madame Necker, sedate and grave, have their 
day. But this empty world is passing fast away. The storm which 
has gathered through centuries breaks forth. In that new contest, 
destined to ruin her power, woman still takes an active part. She 
rules parties, defends a monarchy with Marie- Antoinette, or founds 
a republic with Madame Roland. We behold her avenging out- 
raged humanity under the form of Charlotte Corday; teaching men 
how to suffer and die in every prison and on every scaffold ; over- 
throwing the whole fabric of tyranny with the generous Madame 
Tallien, and defending the freedom of thought with the gifted daughter 
of Necker. 

Profligacy, scepticism, daring wit, struggles of monarch and 



CONCLUDING KEFLECTIONS. 369 

people, terror and reaction, would indeed have existed without her; 
but they could not have been what they are now in the history of 
that age, had woman remained inactive and apart. If she did not 
do more good, let it be remembered that her power was conditional: 
it was confined within fixed limits, and submissive to that spirit of 
the times which both men and women obeyed. Yet it is sad to 
reflect how much, that could have been effected, was left undone. 
Morals might have been preserved more pure, and their purity is 
woman's own peculiar care; faith need not have fallen so low; a 
spirit of charity and peace might have been diffused, instead of one 
of bitterness and strife. The passionate impulse which precipitated 
France in her career was partly owing to women : had they tem- 
pered instead of accelerated the fever of the day, so many dark and 
mournful pages need not have been found in the history of their 
country. As, it was, their part was still great and striking. They 
gave more grace to wit, more daring to philosophy, more generosity 
to political contests, and more heroism to defeat and death. For 
those who know how to look beyond the mere surface of history, 
the action of woman in France during the eighteenth century will 
not soon be forgotten. She appears in that age — the most remark- 
able since that of the Reformation — connected with every important 
question. We behold her giving a stronger impulse to literature, 
aiding the development of philosophy and thought; and, like man, 
earnestly seeking, through all the mists and errors of human know- 
ledge, to solve the great social and political problems which still 
agitate us in our day : the legacy of the past to the future. 



THE END. 



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incalculable value. It brings before the mind's eye, in one grand panoramic view, 
and in a form clear, definite, and easily comprehensible, all the facts at present 
known relative to the great subjects of which it treats, and may be regarded as a 
lucid epitome of a thousand scattered volumes, more or less intrinsically valuable, of 
which it contains the heart and substance.— Blackwood'' s Magazine. 

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Atlas, and of the valuable information contained in the letterpress which accompanies 
it, which has afforded her the greatest assistance. It was the author's wish, and her 
publisher's intention, that the present edition should be accompanied by a series of 
maps to illustrate the more important questions of Physical Geography treated of in 
it ; but Mr. A. Keith Johnston having announced the publication of a new edition of 
his "Physical Atlas," in a reduced size at a low price — the first two numbers of 
which have already appeared — the project was relinquished, in the belief that Mr. A. 
K. Johnston's smaller Atlas will furnish suitable illustrations to this work. — From the 
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model. — Tail's 'Edinburgh Magazine. 

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Geography, when confined to descriptions of the mere form of the earth, the height of 
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commensurate with the lofty ideas which it clothes. In Mrs. Somerville's pages no 
sentiments are recorded which the Christian or philosopher disowns. In associating 
life with nature — in taking cognizance of man as tenant of the earth -home which she 
describes, her aspirations ever after truth, secular and divine, and everywhere through- 
out her work we meet with just and noble sentiments, the indication and the offspring 
of a highly cultivated and well balanced mind. — North British Review. 

From the information given, and the strength of thought displayed, on almost every 
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Our praise comes lagging in the rear, and is well-nigh superfluous. But we are 
anxious to recommend to ouryouth the enlarged method of studying geography which 
her present work demonstrates to be as captivating as it is instructive. Nowhere, 
except in her own previous work, The Connexion of the Physical Sciences, is there 
to be found so large a store of well-selected information so lucidly set forth. In sur- 
veying and grouping together whatever has been seen by the eyes of others, or detect- 
ed by their laborious investigations, she is not surpassed by any one. We have no 
obscurities other than what the imperfect stale of science itself involves her in ; no 
dissertations which are felt to interrupt or delay. She strings her beads distinct and 
close together. With quiet perspicacity she seizes at once whatever is most interest- 
ing and most captivating in her subject. Therefore it is we are for the book ; and we 
hold such presents as Mrs. Somerville has bestowed upon the public, to be of incalcu- 
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LIST OF PLATES. 
Nora Cretna, .... Painted by W. P. Frith, Engr'd by E. Finden. 
Rich and Rare werethe Gems she Wore, " W. Fisher, " W. H. Mote. 

Efeleen, " R. T. Bott, " E. Finden. 

Love's Young Dream, - - - " A. Derby, « E. Finden 

Lesbia, " W. P. Frith, » W. Holl. 

Kathleen and St. Kevin, - - " E. Hawkes, " W. Holl. 

The Hamlet's Pride, - " W. Room, " W.Edwards. 

Laughing Eyes, " W. P. Frith, « E. Finden. 

The Mountain Sprite, ... " F. Wood, " E. Finden. 

The Desmond's Love, - " F.Crowley, ". W.Edwards. 

The care which has been exercised in every portion of this volume, both as to its 
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Now Ready.— MACKAY'S TRAVELS IN THE UNITED STATES. 

THE WESTERN WORM>; 

OR, TRAVELS IN THE UNITED STATES. 

exhibiting them in their latest development, social, political, 

and industrial. 

INCLUDING A CHAPTER ON CALIFORNIA. 
BY ALEXANDER MACKAY, Esq. 

PROM THE SECOND AND ENLARGED LONDON EDITION. 

In two very neat vols., royal 12mo. 
READINGS FOR THE YOUNG. 

FROM THE WORKS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

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POEMS, 

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LEA & BLANCHARD'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
SHAW'S ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. 

BY THOMAS B. SHAW, 

Professor of English Literature in the Imperial Alexander Lyceum of St. Petersburg 
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A valuable and very interesting volume, which for various merits will gradually 
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Supplies a want long and severely felt. — Southern Literary Gazette. 

Traces our literary history with remarkable zest, fairness, and intelligence. — N. Y. 
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From the Rev. W. G. T. Shedd, Professor of English Literature in the University of Vt. 

Burlington, Mat 18, 1849. 
I t ake great pleasure in saying that it supplies a want that has long existed of a 
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FOSTER'S EUROPEAN LITERATURE.— Now Ready. 

HANDBOOK OF MODERN EUROPEAN LITERATURE: 

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ATLAS TO DANA ON CORALS. 

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A FEW COPIES STILL ON HAND OF 

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WESTERN" AMERICA, 

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TAL.ES and stories from history, 

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DISTRICT SCHOOL AND OTHER PUBLIC LIBRARIES, 

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SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME (THE FOURTEENTH), 

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EDITED BY HENRY VETHAKE, LL.D. 

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In one large octavo volume of over 650 double columned pages. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA AMERICANA. 



The numerous subscribers who have been waiting the completion of this 
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A REGISTER OF THE EVENTS OF THE LAST FIFTEEN 
YEARS, FOR THE WHOLE WORLD, 

can obtain this volume separately : price Two Dollars uncut in cloth, or 
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events occur. The last fourteen years have been full of them, and great discoveries have been 
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m the publication." — United States Gazette. 

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man's Journal. 

" This volume of the Encyclopaedia is a Westminster Abbey of American reputation. What 
names are on the roll since 1833 !" — N. Y. Literary World. 

" The work to which this volume forms a supplement, is one of the most important contributions 
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volume, which is edited by one of the most distinguished scholars of our country, is worthy to 
follow in the train of those which have preceded it. It is a remarkably felicitous condensation 
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LEA AND BLAN CHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

CAMPBELL'S LORD CHANCELLORS. 

JUST PUBLISHED. 



LIVES OF THE LORD CHANCELLORS AND KEEPERS OF THE 
GREAT SEAL OF ENGLAND, 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE IV., 

BY JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, A.M., F.R.S.E. 

First Series, forming three neat volumes in demy octavo, extra cloth. 
Bringing the work to the time of Lord Jeffries. 

THE SECOND SERIES WILL SHORTLY FOLLOW IN FOUR VOLUMES TO MATCH. 

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" The volumes teem with exciting incidents, abound in portraits, sketches and anecdotes, and ar« 
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" The brilliant success of this work in England is by no means greater than its merits. It is 
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of History."— N. Y. Tribune. 

MURRAY'S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GEOGRAPHY. 



i 



THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GEOGRAPHY, 

COMPRISES 

A COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE EARTH, PHYSICAL, 
STATISTICAL, CIVIL AND POLITICAL. 

EXHIBITING 

ITS RELATION TO THE HEAVENLY BODIES, ITS PHYSICAL STRUCTURE, THE 

NATURAL HISTORY" OF EACH COUNTRY". AND THE INDUSTRY*, 

COMMERCE, POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS, AND CIVIL 

AND SOCIAL STATE OF ALL NATIONS. 

BY HUGH MURRAY, F.R.S.E., &c. 

Assisted in Botany, by Professor HOOKER— Zoology, jkc., by W. W. SWALNSON— Astronomy, &c 
by Professor WALLACE— Geology, &c, by Professor 3 AMESON. 

REVISED, "WITH ADDITIONS, 

BY THOMAS G. BRADFORD. 

THE WHOLE BROUGHT UP, BY A SUPPLEMENT, TO 1843. 
In three large octavo volumes. 

VARIOUS STYLES OF BINDING. 

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best style. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

STRICKLAND'S QUEENS OF ENGLAND. 
A NEW AND ELEGANT EDITION 

OF 

LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND, 

FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST; 

WITH ANECDOTES OF THEIR COURTS, NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM OFFICIAI 

RECORDS AND OTHER AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS, PRIVATE AS WELL AS PUBLIC. 

NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. 

BY AGNES STRICKLAND. 

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Volume One, of nearly seven hundred large pages, containing Volumes 
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A few copies still on hand of the Duodecimo Edition. Ten volumes are 
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MARY OF MODENA, AND MARY II. 

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" A charming work — full of interest, at once serious and pleasing." — Monsieur Guizot. 

' A most charming biographical memoir. We conclude by expressing our unqualified opinion r 
that we know of no more valuable contribution to modern history than this ninth vol'ime of M:*e 
Strickland's Lives of the Queens." — Morning Herald. 



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ROSCOE'S LIVES OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND. 

TO MATCH MISS STRICKLAND'S "QUEENS." 

VOLUME ONE, CONTAINING THE 

LIFE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 

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upon English history, every library ought to be provided." — Sunday Times. 

MEMOIRS OF THE LOVES OF THE POETS. 
Biographical Sketches of Women celebrated in Ancient and 

Modern Poetry. 

BY MRS. JAMIESON. 
In one royal duodecimo volume, price 75 cents. 

FREDERICK THE GREAT, HIS COURT AND TIMES, 

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY THOMAS CAMP- 

BELL, ESQ., AUTHOR OF THE "PLEASURES OF HOPE." 

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HISTORY OF CONGRESS, 

EXHIBITING A CLASSIFICATION OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SENATE AND THE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. FROM 1789 TO 1793. EMBRACING THE FIRST 

TERM OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF GENERAL WASHINGTON. 

In one large octavo volume of over 700 pages, price only $1.50. 

MOORE'S IHSLAND-NOW COMPLETE. 

THE HISTORY OF IRELAND, 

FROM THE EARLIEST KINGS OF THAT REALM DOWN TO ITS LATEST CHIEFS. 

In two octavo volumes, extra cloth. 

Mr. Moore has at length completed his History of Ireland containing the most troubled and inter- 
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far as the Great Expedition against Scotland in 1515, can procure the second volume separate. 

HISTORY OF TH?W^ IN 1815, 

CONTAINING MINUTE DETAILS OF THE BATTLES OF QUATRE-BRAS, LIGNY. WAVRE 

AND WATERLOO. 

BY CAPTAIN W. SIBORNE. 

In one octavo volume, with Maps and Plans of Battles, &c, viz.: 

1. Part of Belgium, indicating the distribution of the armies on commencing hostilities. 2. Field 
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at a quarter past 2 o'clock, P. M. 5. Field of Ligny, at half past 8 o'clock, P. M. 6. Field of Water- 
loo, at a quarter past 11 o'clock, A. M. 7. Field of Waterloo, at a quarter before 8 o'clock, P. M. 
8. Field of Waterloo, at 5 minutes past 8 o'clock, P. M. 9. Field of Wavre, at 4 o'clock, P. M., 18th 
June. 10. Field of Wavre, at 4 o'clock, A. M., 19th June. 11. Part of France, on which, is shown 
the advance of the Allied Armies into the Kingdom. 

TEXT BOOZE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 

BY J. C. I GIESELER, PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN GOTTINGEN. TRANSLATED 

FROM THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION, BY F. CUNNINGHAM. 

In three octavo volumes, containing over 1200 large pages. 

ELEMENTS OP UNIVERSAL HISTORY, 

ON A NEW AND SYSTEMATIC PLAN, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE TREATY 

OF VIENNA, TO WHICH IS ADDED A SUMMARY OF THE LEADING 

EVENTS SINCE THAT PERIOD. 

BY H. WHITE, B.A. 

SIXTH AMERICAN EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS 

BY JOHN S. HART, A.M. 

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GRAHAME'S COLONIAL HISTORY. 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

FROM THE PLANTATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

TILL THEIR ASSUMPTION OF INDEPENDENCE. 

SECOND AMERICAN EDITION, 

ENLARGED AND AMENDED, 

WITH A MEMOIR BY PRESIDENT QUINCY. 

IN TWO LARGE OCTAVO VOLUMES, EXTRA CLOTH, 
WITH A PORTRAIT. 

This work having assumed the position of a standard history of this 
country, the publishers have been induced to issue an edition in smaller size 
and at a less cost, thai its circulation may be commensurate with its merits. 
It is now considered as the most impartial and trustworthy history that has 
yet appeared. 

A few copies of the edition in four volumes, on extra fine thick paper, 

price eight dollars, may still be had by gentlemen desirous of procuring a 

beautiful work for their libraries. 

" It is universally known to literary men as, in its original form, one of the earliest histories of 
this country, and certainly one of the best ever written by a foreigner. It has been constantly and 
copiously used by every one who has. since its appearance, undertaken the history of this country. 
In the course of the memoir prefixed to it, it is vindicated from the aspersions cast on it by Mr. 
Bancroft, who, nevertheless, has derived from it a vast amount of the information and documentary 
material of his own ambitious, able and extended work. It is issued in two volumes, and cannot 
fail to ncd its way to every library of any pretensions. — JN'ew York Courier and Enquirer. 

COOPER'S NAVAL HISTORY. 



HISTORY OF THE NAVY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

BY J. FENIMORE COOPER. 

THIRD EDITION, WITH CORRECTIONS AND ADDITIONS. 

Complete, two volumes in one, neat extra cloth, 

With a Portrait of the Author, Two Maps, and Portraits of Paul Jones, Baikbridgb, 

Dale, Preble, Decatur, Porter, Perry, and McDonough. 

WRAXALL'S HISTORICAL MEMOIRS. 



HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF MY OWN TIMES, 

BY SIR N. W. WRAXALL. 

ONE NEAT VOLUME, EXTRA CLOTH. 

This is the work for which, in consequence of too truthful a portraiture of Catherine II., the 
author was imprisoned and fined. Taught by this experience, his succeeding memoirs he bup- 
pressed until after his death. 

WRAXALL'S POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS. 



POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF HIS OWN TIMES, 

BY SIR N. W. WRAXALL. 

IN ONE VOLUME, EXTRA CLOTH. 

This work contains much secret and amusing anecdote of the prominent personages of the day, 
which rendered its posthumous publication necessary 



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WALPOLE'S LET TERS AND MEMOIRS. 

THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, 

CONTAINING NEARLY THREE HUNDRED LETTERS. 
NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE ORIGINALS, AND FORMING AN UNINTER- 
RUPTED SERIES FROM 1735 TO 1797. 

In four large octavo volumes, with a portrait of the Author. 

iniTFRlsj^^ 

THE LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF ORFORD, 

TO SIR HORACE MANN, FROM 1760 TO 1785. 

NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS. 

In two octavo volumes, to match the above. 

WALPlfilllT ^ 

MEMOIRS OF THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE THE THIRD, 

BY HORACE WALPOLE. 

NOW FIRST PUBLISHED FROM THE ORIGINAL MSS. 

EDITED, WITH NOTES, 

BY SIR DENLS LE MARCHANT. 

These Memoirs comprise the first twelve years of the reign of George III. ; and recommend 
themselves especially to the reader in this country, as containing an account of the early trouble* 
with America. They form a sequel to the " Memoirs of George the Second," by the same author. 

HISTORY OF THE HUGUENOTS— A NEW EDITION, 

CONTINUED TO THE PRESENT TIME. 

BY W. S. BROWNING. 

In one large octavo volume, extra cloth. 

" One of the most interesting and valuable contributions to modern history." — Gentleman's Maga- 
zine. 

" Not the least interesting portion of the work has reference to the violence and persecutions 
of 1815."— Times. 

INGERSQL L'S LA TE WAR, 

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE SECOND WAR BETWEEN 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND GREAT 

BRITAIN, DECLARED BY ACT OF CONGRESS, 

JUNE 18, 1812, AND CONCLUDED BY 

PEACE, FEBRUARY 15, 1815. 

BY CHARLES J. ISTGBHSOLL. 

One volume octavo of 516 pages, embracing the events of 1812 — 1813. 

Beautifully printed, and done up in neat extra cloth. 

r uinTsHcTo ^^ , 

MEMORANDA OF A RESIDENCE AT THE COURT OF LONDON, 

COMPRISING INCIDENTS OFFICIAL AND PERSONAL, FROM 131!) TO 1325; 

INCLUDING NEGOTIATIONS ON THE OREGON QUESTION, AND OTHER UNSETTLED RELATIONS 
BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND GREAT BRITAIN. 

BY HZCHABD HUS3X, 

Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States, from 1817 to 1826 

In one large and beautiful octavo volume, extra cloth. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

N I EB U H PL'S ROM E. 

THE HISTOHY OF ROME, 

BY B. G. NIEBUHR. 

COMPLETE IN TWO LARGE OCTAVO VOLUMES. 

Done up in extra cloth ; or five parts, paper, price $1.00 each. 

The last three parts of this valuable book have never before been published in this country, hav- 
ing only lately been printed in Germany, and translated in England. The two last of these com- 
prise Professor Niebuhr's Lectures on the latter part of Roman History, so long lost to the world. 

" It is an unexpected surprise and pleasure to the admirers of Niebuhr — that is, to all earnest stu- 
dents of ancient history — to recover, as from the grave, the lectures before us." — Eclectic Review. 

" The world has now in Niebuhr an imperishable model." — Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1844. 

" Here we close our remarks upon this memorable work, a work which, of all that have appeared 
in our aee. is the best fitted to excite men of learning to intellectual activity : from which the most 
accomplished scholar may gather fresh stores of knowledge, to which the most experienced politi- 
cian may resort for theoretical and practical instruction, and which no person can read as it ought 
to be read, without feeling the better and more generous sentiments of his common human nature 
enlivened and strengthened." — Edinburgh Review. 

" It is since I saw you that I have been devouring with the most intense admiration the third 
volume of Niebuhr. The clearness and comprehensiveness of all his military details is a new 
feature in that wonderful mind, and how inimitably beautiful is that brief account of Terni." — Dr 
Arnold (Life, vol. ii.) 

PKOFESSOR RANK E'S HI STORICAL WORKS. 

HISTOBT OF THE POPES, 

THEIR CHURCH AND STATE, IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 
BY LEOPOLD BANEE. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE LAST EDITION OF THE GERMAN, BY WALTER K. KELLY, ESQ., B. A. 

In two parts, paper, at $1.00 each, or one large volume, extra cloth. 

"A book extraordinary for its learning and impartiality, and for its just and liberal views of the 
tames it describes. The best compliment that can be paid to Mr. Ranke, is, that each side has 
accused him of partiality to its opponent ; the German Protestants complaining that his work is 
written in too Catholic a spirit ; — the Catholics declaring, that generally impartial as he is, it is 
clear to perceive the Protestant tendency of the history."— London Times. 

THE TUHKISH AND SPANISH EMPIRES, 

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY AND BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH, 
BY PROFESSOR LEOPOLD RANEE. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE LAST EDITION OF THE GERMAN, BY WALTER K. KELLY, ESQ. 

Complete in one part, paper, price 75 cents. 

This work was published by the author in connexion with the "History of the Popes," under 
the name of "Sovereigns and Nations of Southern Europe, in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen- 
turies." It may be used separately, or bound up with that work, for which purpose two titles will 
be found in it. 

HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY, 

BY PROFESSOR LEOPOLD RANKE. 
PARTS FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD NOW READY. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND EDITION, BY SARAH AUSTIN. 

To be completed in Five parts, each part containing one volume of the London edition. 
" Few modern writers possess such qualifications for doing justice to so great a subject as Leo 
pold Ranke. — Indefatigable in exertions, he revels in the toil of examining archives and state 
papers : honest in purpose, he shapes his theories from evidence ; not like D'Aubigne, whose 
romance of the Reformation selects evidence to support preconceived theory. Ranke never forgets 
the statesman in the theologian, or the historian in the partisan." — Athenaeum. 

BROUGHAM ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 

One volume 12nio., paper, price 50 cents. 

STUDIES OF THE LIFE OF WOMAN. 

FROM THE FRENCH OF MADAME NECKER DE SAUSSURE. 
In one neat 12mo. volume, fancy paper. Price 75 cents. 

THE EDUCATION OF MOTHERS; OR, CIVILIZATION OF 
MANKIND BY WOMEN. 

FROM THE FRENCH OF L. AIME MARTIN. 
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SCHMITZ AND ZUMPT'S CLASSICAL SERIES. 

VOLUME I. 

C. JUJLII C^SARIS 

COMMENTARII DE BELLO GALLICO. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND A GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX IN ENGLISH, 

ALSO, A MAP OF GAUL, AND ILLUSTRATIVE ENGRAVINGS. 

In one handsome 18mo. volume, extra cloth. 

This Series has been placed under the editorial management of two eminent scholars 

and practical teachers, Dr. Schmitz, Rector of the High School, Edinburgh, and Dr. 

Zompt, Professor in the University of Berlin, and will combine the following advan- 

tages :— 

1. A gradually ascending series of School Books on a uniform plan, so as to constitute within a 
definite number, a complete Latin Curriculum. 

2. Certain arrangements in the rudimentary volumes, which will insure a f&ir amount of know- 
ledge in Roman literature to those who are not designed for professional life, and who therefore 
will not require to extend their studies to the advanced portion of the series. 

3. The text of each author will be such as has been constituted by the most recent collations of 
manuscripts, and will be prefaced by biographical and critical sketches in English, that pupils may 
be made aware of the character and peculiarities of the work they are about to study. 

4. To remove difficulties, and sustain an interest in the text, explanatory notes in English will 
be placed at the foot of each page, and such comparisons drawn as may serve to unite the history 
of the past with the realities of modern times. 

5. The works, generally, will be embellished with maps and illustrative engravings, — accompani- 
ments which will greatly assist the student's comprehension of the nature of the countries and 
leading circumstances described. 

6. The respective volumes will be issued at a price considerably less than that usually charged ; 
and as the texts are from the most eminent sources, and the whole series constructed upon a de- 
terminate plan, the practice of issuing new and altered editions, which is complained of alike by 
teachers and pupils, will be altogether avoided. 

From among the testimonials which the publishers have received, they append the 
following to show that the design of the series has been fully and successfully carried 

out; — 

Central High School, Phila., Jwie 29, 1847 
Gentlemen : — 

I have been much pleased with your edition of Caesar's Gallic Wars, being part of Schmitz and 
Zumpt's classical series for schools. The work seems happily adapted to the wants of learners. 
The notes contain much valuable information, concisely and accurately expressed, and on the points 
that really require elucidation, while at the same time the book is not rendered tiresome and ex- 
pensive by a useless array of mere learning. The text is one in high repute, and your reprint of it 
is pleasing to the eye. I take great pleasure in commending the publication to the attention of 
teachers. It will, 1 am persuaded, commend itself to all who give it a fair examination. 

Very Respectfully, Your Obt. Servt., 

JOHN S. HART, 
To Messrs. Lea & Blanchard. Principal Phila. High Srfwol. 



Gentlemen.— ' June 28 - m7 - 

The edition of "Caesar's Commentaries," embraced in the Classical Section of Chambers's Edu- 
cational Course, and given to the world under the auspices of Drs. Schmitz and Zumpt has re- 
ceived from me a candid examination. I have no hesitation in saying, that the design expressed H) 
the notice of the publishers, has been successfully accomplished, and that the work is well calcu- 
lated to become popular and useful. The text appears to be unexceptionable. The annotations 
embrace in condensed form such valuable information, as must not only facilitate the rest.. 
the scholar, but also stimulate to further inquiry, without encouraging indolence. This is an im- 
portant feature in the right prosecution of classical studies, wlueh ought to be more generally un- 
derstood and appreciated. H. HAVERSTICK, 

Prof, of Ancient Languages, Central High School, Phila, 



VOLUME II. 

P. VIRGILII MARONIS CARMINA. 

NEARLY READY. 



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BIRD'S NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

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ELEMENTS OF NATURAL, PHILOSOPHY, 

BEING AN EXPERIMENTAL INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 

ILLUSTRATED WITH OVER THREE HUNDBED WOOD-CUTS. 

BY GOLDING BIRD, M.D., 

Assistant Physician to Guy's Hospital. 

FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION. 

In one neat volume. 

" By the appearance of Dr. Bird's work, the student has now all that he can desire in one neat, 
concise, and well-dis-ested volume. The elements of natural philosophy are explained in very sim- 
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ARNOTT'S PHYSICS. 



ELEMENTS OF PHYSICS; OR, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 

GENERAL AND MEDICAL. 

WRITTEN FOR UNIVERSAL USE, UN PLAIN, OR NON-TECHNICAL LANGUAGE. 

BY NIELL ARNOTT, 2VE.D. 

A NEW EDITION, BY ISAAC HAYS, M. D. 

Complete in one octavo volume, with nearly two hundred wood-cuts. 

This standard work has been long and favourably known as one of the best popular expositions 
of the interesting science it treats of. It is extensively used in many of the first seminaries. 

ELEMENTARY CHEMISTRY, THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL, 

BY GEORGE FOWNE S, Ph. D., 

Chemical Lecturer in the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, &c, <fcc. 
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 

EDITED, WITH ADDITIONS, 

BY ROBERT BRIDGES, M.D., 

Professor of General and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, &c.,<fec. 

SECOND AMERICAN EDITION. 

In one large duodecimo volume, sheep or extra cloth, with nearly two 
hundred wood-cuts. 

The character of this work is such as to recommend it to all colleges and academies in want of a 
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so entirely changed the face of the science, and it is completely illustrated with very numerous 
wood engravings, explanatory of all the different processes and forms of apparatus. Though strictly 
scientific, it is written wilh great clearness and simplicity of style, rendering it easy to be compre- 
hended by those who are commencin? the studv. 

It may be had well bound in leather, or neatly done up in strong cloth.. Us low price places it 
within the reach of all. 



BREWSTER'S OPTICS. 



BLBHEUTS OP OPTICS, 

BY SIR DAVID BREWSTER. 

WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS, BV A. D. BACHE, LL.D. 

Superintendent of the Coast Survey, &c. 

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the French language. 

A SELECTION OF ONE HUNDRED PERRIN'S FABLES, 

ACCOMPANIED BY A KEY, 

Containing the text, a literal and free translation, arranged in such a manner as to 
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A COLLECTION OF COLLOQUIAL PHRASES, 

ON EVERY TOPIC NECESSARY TO MAINTAIN CONVERSATION, 
Arranged under different heads, with numerous remarks on the peculiar pronunciation 
and uses of various words; the whole so disposed as considerably to facilitate the 
acquisition of a correct pronunciation of the French, in 1 vol., 18ino. 

LES AVENTURES DE TELEJIAQUE PAR FENELON, 

In 1 vol., 12mo., accompanied by a Key to the first eight books, in 1 vol., 12mo., con- 
taining, like the Fables, the text, a literal and free translation, intended as a sequel 
to the Fables. Either volume sold separately. 

ALL THE FRENCH VERBS, 

Both regular and, irregular, in a small volume. 

NEARLY READY. 



PRINCIPLES OF PHYSICS AND METEOROLOGY, 

BY J. MULLER, 

Professor of Physics at the University of Frieburg. 

ILLUSTRATED WITH NEARLY FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD, AND TWC 

COLORED PLATES. 

In one octavo volume. 

This Edition is improved by the addition of various articles, and will be found in 
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"The Physics of Muller is a work, superb, complete, unique : the greatest want known to Eng- 
lish Science could not have been better supplied. The work is of surpassing interest. The value 
of this contribution to the scientific records of this country may be duly estimated by the fact, that 
the cost of the original drawings and engravings alone has exceeded the sum of 20007." — Lancet, 
March, 1847. 

AS* ATLAS OF ASffCIESSTT GEOGRAPHY, 
BY SAMUEL BUTLER, D.D., 

Late Lord Bishop of Litchfield, 

CONTAINING TWENTY-ONE COLOURED MAI'S, AND A COMPLETE ACCENTUATED INDEX. 

In one octavo volume, half-bound. 

BUTLER'S AN CIENT GEOGRAPHY. 

G330GRA?niA CLASSXGA, 

OR, T^E APPLICATION OF ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY TO THE CLASSICS 

BY SAMUEL BUTLER, D.D., F.R.S. 

RETISED BY ITIS SON. 

FIFTH AMERICAN, FUOM THE LAST LONDON EDITION, 

WITH QUESTIONS ON THE MAPS, BY JOHN FROST. 
In one duodecimo volume, half-bound, to match the Atlas. 



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SCHOOL BOOKS. 



WHITE'S UNI VERS AL HISTORY. 

LATELY PUBLISHED, 

ELEMENTS OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY, 

ON A NEW" AND SYSTEMATIC PLAN; 

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE TREATY OF VIENNA ; TO WHICH IS ADDED, A 

SUMMARY OF THE LEADING EVENTS SINCE THAT PERIOD, FOR THE 

USE OF SCHOOLS AND PRIVATE STUDENTS. 

BY H. WHITE, B.A., 

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 

WITH ADDITIONS AND QUESTIONS, 

BY JOHN S. HART, A.M., 

Principal of the Philadelphia High School, and Professor of Moral and Mental Science, &c, <&c. 

In one volume, large duodecimo, neatly bound with Maroon Backs. 

This work is arranged on a new plan, which is believed to combine the 
advantages of those formerly in use. It is divided into three parts, corre- 
sponding with Ancient, Middle, and Modern History ; which parts are again 
subdivided into centuries, so that the various events are presented in the 
order of time, while it is so arranged that the annals of each country can be 
read consecutively, thus combining the advantages of both the plans hitherto 
pursued in works of this kind. To guide the researches of the student, 
there will be found numerous synoptical tables, with remarks and sketches 
of literature, antiquities, and manners, at the great chronological epochs. 

The additions of the American editor have been principally confined to 
the chapters on the history of this country. The series of questions by him 
will be found of use to those who prefer that system of instruction. For 
those who do not, the publishers have had an edition prepared without the 
questions. 

This work has already passed through several editions, and has been 
introduced into many of the higher Schools and Academies throughout the 
country. From among numerous recommendations which they have re- 
ceived, the publishers annex the following from the Deputy Superintendent 
of Common Schools for New York: 

Secretary's Office, > State of New York. 

Department of Common Schools. 5 Albany, Oct. 14/7i, 1845. 

Messrs. Lea <$■ Blanchard :' 

Gentlemen: — I have examined the copy of "White's Universal History," which you were so 
obliging as to send me, and cheerfully and fully concur in the commendations of its value, as a com- 
prehensive and enlightened survey of the Ancient and Modern World which many of the most com- 
petent judges have, as I perceive, already bestowed upon it. It appears to me to be admirably 
adapted to the purposes of our public schools ; and I unhesitatingly approve of its introduction into 
those seminaries of elementary instruction. - Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

SAMUEL S. RANDALL, 
Deputy Superintendent Common Schools. 

This work is admirably calculated for District and other libraries : an edition for that purpose 
without questions has been prepared, done up in strong cloth. 

HERSGHELL'S ASTRONOMY. 



£L TREATISE OS? ASTRON OaK^, 
BY SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHELL, F. R. S., &c. 

WITH NDMEROU8 PLATES AND WOOD-CUTS. 

A NEW EDITION, WITH A PREFACE AND A SERIES OF QUESTIONS, 

BY S.C.WALKER. 

In one volume. 12mo. 



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POPULAR SCIENCE. 



PHILOSOPHY IN SPORT, MADE SCIENCE IN EARNEST, 

BEING AN ATTEMPT TO ILLUSTRATE THE FIRST PRIN 

CIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, BY THE 

AID OF THE POPULAR TOYS AND 

SPORTS OF YOUTH. 

FROM THE SIXTH" AND GREATLY IMPROVED LONDON EDITION. 

In one very neat royal 18mo. volume, with nearly one hundred illustrations on wood. 

Fine extra crimson cloth. 

" Messrs. Lea <fe Blanchard have issued, in a beautiful manner, a handsome book, called ■ Philoso- 
phy in Sport, made Science in Earnest.' This is an admirable attempt to illustrate the first prin- 
ciples of Natural Philosophy, by the aid of the popular toys and sports of youth. Useful informa- 
tion is conveyed in an easy, graceful, yet dignified manner, and rendered easy to the simplest under- 
standing. The book is an admirable one, and must meet with universal favour." — N. Y. Evening 
Mirror. 

ENDLESS AMUSEMENT. 

JUST ISSUED. 



ENDLESS AMUSEMENT, 

A COLLECTION OF 

NEARLY FOUR HUNDRED ENTERTAINING EXPERIMENTS 
IN VARIOUS BRANCHES OF SCIENCE, 

INCLUDING 
ACOUSTICS, ARITHMETIC, CHEMISTRY, ELECTE1CITY, HYDRAULICS, HYDROSTATICS, 
MAGNETISM, MECHANICS, OPTICS, WONDERS OF THE AIR PUMP, ALL THE 
POPULAR TRICKS AND CHANGES OF THE CARDS, &c, &c 

TO WHICH IS ADDED, 

A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF PYROTECHNY, 
OR THE ART OF MAKING FIRE- WORKS: 

THE WHOLE SO CLEARLY EXPLAINED AS TO BE WITHIN REACH 

OF THE MOST LIMITED CAPACITY. 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 

FROM THE SEVENTH LONDON EDITION. 

In one neat royal 18mo. volume, fine extra crimson cloth. 

This work has lone supplied instructive amusement to the rising generations in England, and 
will doubtless be hailed with pleasure by those of this country who like (and what boy does not) 
the marvellous tricks and changes, experiments and wonders afforded by the magic of science and 
jugglery. 

CHEMISTRY OF THE FOUR SEASONS, 

SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN, AND WINTER. 

AN ESSAY, PRINCIPALLY CONCERNING NATURAL PHENOMENA, ADMITTING OP 

INTERPRETATION BY CHEMICAL SCIENCE, AND ILLUSTRATING 

PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE. 

BY THOMAS GRIFFITHS, 

PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY IN THE MEDICAL COLLEGE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL. ETC. 

In one large royal 12mo. volume, with many Wood-Cuts, extra cloth. 

■ Chemistry is assuredly one of the most useful and interesting of the natural sciences. Chemical 
changes meet us at every step, and during every season, the winds and the rain, the heat and the 
frosts, each have their peculiar and appropriate phenomena. And those who have hitherto re- 
mained insensible to these changes and unmoved amid such remarkable, and often startling re- 
sults, will lose their apathy upon reading the Chemistry of the 'Four Seasons,' and be prepared to 
enjoy the highest intellectual pleasures. Conceived in a happy spirit, and written with taste and 
elegance, the essay of Mr. Griffiths cannot fail to receive the admiration of cultivated minds; and 
those who have looked less carefully into nature's beauties, will find themselves led on step by 
step, until they realize a new intellectual being. Such works, we believe, exert a happy influence 
over society, and hence we hope that the present one may be extensively read."— The Western 
Lancet. 



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POP ULAR SCIE NCE. 
KIRBY AND SPENCE'S E NTOMOLO GY, FOR POPULAR USE. 

AN INTRODUCTION 1 TO ENTOMOLOGT; 

OR, ELEMENTS OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INSECTS; COMPRISING AN ACCOUNT 

OF NOXIOUS AND USEFUL INSECTS, OF THEIR METAMORPHOSES, FOOD, 

STRATAGEMS, HABITATIONS, SOCIETIES, MOTIONS, NOISES, 

HYBERNATION, INSTINCT, «fcc, <kc. 

With Plates, Plain or Colored. 

EY WILLIAM KIRBY,M.A.,F.R.S,, AND WILLIAM SPENCE, ESQ., F.R.S. 

FROM THE SIXTH LONDON EDITION, WHICH WAS CORRECTED AMD CONSIDERABLY ENLARGED. 

In one large octavo volume, extra cloth. 

" We have been greatly interested in running over the pages of this treatise. There is scarcely, in 
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one than is calculated to excite more curiosity or wonder. 

" The popular form of letters is adopted by the authors in imparting a knowledge of the subject, 
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and classes." — Hunt's Merchcmts' Magazine. 

ANSTED'S ANCIENT WORLD. 

JUST ISSUED. 



FHE ANCIENT WORLD, OR, PICTURESQUE SKETCHES OF CREATION. 
BY D. T. ANSTED, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. 

PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. 

In one very neat volume, fine extra cloth, with about One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations. 

The object of this work is to present to the general reader the chief results of Geological investi- 
gation in a simple and comprehensive manner. The author has avoided all minute details of geo- 
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striking views of the wonderful results of the science, divested of its mere technicalities. The 
work is got up in a handsome manner, with numerous illustrations, and forms a neat volume for the 
centre table. 

GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY, 

WITH INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF MINERALS. 

BY JOSHUA TRIMMER, F. G. S. 

With two Hundred and Twelve Wood-Cuts, a handsome octavo volume, bound in embossed cloth. 

This is a systematic introduction to Mineralogy, and Geology, admirably calculated to instruct 

the student in those sciences. The organic remains of the various formations are well illustrated 

by numerous figures, which are drawn with great accuracy. 

NEW aF[MM)M^^ 

NOW READY. 



MEDICAL SOTAN7, 

OR, A DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE MOKE IMPORTANT PLANTS USED IN MEDICINE, 
AND OF THEER PROPERTIES, USES AND MODES OF ADMLNISTRATION. 

BY R. EGIiESFEIiB* GRIFFITH, M.D., «fcc, <fcc. 

In one large octavo volume. With about three hundred and fifty Illustrations on Wooi. 

A POPULAR^TREATisE^^^ ; 

PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE SOCrETY FOR THE PROMOTION OP 
POPULAR INSTRUCTION; WITH NUMEROUS WOOD-CUTS. 

BY W. B. CARPENTER. 

In one volume, 12mo., extra cloth. 

A TREATISE ON COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY, 

BY W. B. CARPENTER. 

REVISED AND MUCH IMPROVED BY THE AUTHOR. WITH BEAUTIFUL STEEL PLATES. 

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EXERCISE, SLEEP, CORPOREAL AND MENTAL PUR- 
SUITS, <fcc., &c., ON HEALTHY MAN, 

CONSTITUTING ELEMENTS OF HYGIENE. 

BY ROBLEY DUNGLISON, M.D., &c.,&c. 
In one octavo volume. 
%* Persons in the pursuit of health, as well as those who desire to retain 
it, would do well to examine this work. The author states the work has 
been prepared "to enable the general reader to understand the nature of 
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ing such means as may tend to its preservation: hence the author has 
avoided introducing technicalities, except where they appeared to him indis- 
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REMARKS ON THE INFLUENCE OF MENTAL EXCITEMENT, 

AND MENTAL CULTIVATION UPON HEALTH. 

BY A. BRIGEAM, JYE.D. 

Third edition ; one volume, 13mo. 

A TREATISE ON 

CORNS, BUNIONS, THE DISEASES OF THE NAIXiS, 

AND THE GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF THE FEET. 
BY LEWIS DURLACHER, 

8CEGEOJ CHIROPODIST TO THE ftUEEJT. 

Iu one duodecimo volume, cloth. 
EEIDG2WATER TREATISES. 

The whole complete in 7 vols. Svo., various bindings, 

COHTAIBTfiG : 

ROGET'S ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, in 2 vols., with many cuts. 
KLRBY ON THE HISTORY, HVBITS AND INSTINCT OF ANIMALS, 1 vol., with plates. 
PROUT ON CHEMISTRY— CHALMERS OX THE MORAL CONDITION OF MAN— WHEWELL 

ON ASTRONOMY— BELL ON THE HAND— KLDD ON THE PHYSICAL CONDITION OP 

iLAN, 2 volumes. 

BUCKLAND'S GEOLOGY, 2 vols., with numerous plates and maps. 

Roget, Buckland, and Kirby are sold separate. 

THE DOMESTIC MANAGEMENT OF THE SICK ROOM, 

NECESSARY, LN AID OF MEDICAL TREATMENT, FOR THE CURE OF DISEASES. 

BY A. T. THOMSON, M. D., &c. &c. 

First American, from the Second London Edition. Edited by R. E. Griffith, M. D. 

In one royal ]2mo. volume, extra cloth, with cuts. 

"There is no interference with the duties of ihe medical attendant, but sound, sensible, and 

clear advice what to do, and how to act, so as to meet uufoieseeu emergencies, and co-operate 

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THE MILLWRIGHT AND MILLER'S GUIDE. 

BY OLIVER EVANS. 

THE ELEVENTH EDITION, 

WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS, BY THE PROFESSOR OF MECHA- 

NICS IN THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

AND A DESCRIPTION OF AN IMPROVED MERCHANT FLOUR MILL. 

WITH ENGRAVINGS. 

BY C. & O. EVANS, ENGINEERS. 
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JOHNSON AND LANDRETH ON FRUIT, KITCHEN, 
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A DICTIONARY OF MODERN GARDENING, 

BY GEORGE WILLIAM JOHNSON, ESQ. 
Author of the " Principles of Practical Gardening," " The Gardener's Almanac," <fcc. 

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY WOOD-CUTS. 

EDITED, WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS, BY DAVID LANDRETH, OF PfflLADELPHIA. 

In one large royal duodecimo volume, extra cloth, of nearly Six Hundred and Fifty 
double columned Pages. 

This edition has been greatly altered from the original. Many articles of little interest to Ameri- 
cans have been curtailed or wholly omitted, and much new matter, with numerous illustrations, 
added, especially with respect to the varieties of fruit which experience has shown to be peculiarly 
adapted to our climate. Still, the editor admits that he has only followed in the path so admirably 
marked out by Mr. Johnson, to whom the chief merit of the work, belongs. It has been an object 
with the editor and publishers to increase its popular character, thereby adapting it to the larger 
class of horticultural readers in this country, and they trust it will prove what they have desired it 
to be, an Encyclopaedia of Gardening, if not of Rural Affairs, so condensed and at such a price as to 
be within reach of nearly all whom those subjects interest. 

" This is a useful compendium of all that description of information which is valuable to the 
modern gardener. It quotes largely from the best standard authors, journals, and transactions of 
societies ; and the labours of the American editor have fitted it for the United States, by judicious 
additions and omissions. The volume is abundantly illustrated with figures in the text, embracing 
a judicious selection of those varieties of fruits which experience has shown to be well suited to the 
United States. — Silliman's Journal. 

" This is the most valuable work we have ever seen on the subject of gardening ; and no man of 
taste who can devote even a quarter of an acre to horticulture ought to be without it. Indeed la- 
dies who merely cultivate flowers within-doors, will find this book an excellent and convenient 
counsellor. It contains one hundred and eighty wood-cut illustrations, which give a distinct idea 
of the fruits and garden-arrangements they are intended to represent. 

" Johnson's Dictionary of Gardening, edited by Landreth, is handsomely printed, well-bound, and 
sold at a price which puts it within the reach of all who would be likely to buy it." — Evergreen. 

THE COM PLETE FLORIST. 
A HHANJJAIm of gardening, 

CONTAINING PRACTICAL INSTRUCTION FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF GREENHOUSE 

PLANTS, AND FOR THE CULTIVATION OF THE SHRUBBERY— THE FLOWER 

GARDEN, AND THE LAWN— WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF THOSE PLANTS 

AND TREES MOST WORTHV OF CULTURE IN EACH 

DEPARTMENT. 

WITH ADDITIONS AND AMENDMENTS, 

ADAPTED TO THE CLIMATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 

In one small volume. Price only Twenty-five Cents. 

THE COMPLETE KITC HEN A ND FRUIT GARDENER. 

A SELECT MANUAL OF KITCHEN GARDENING, 

AND THE CULTURE OF FRUITS, 

CONTAINING FAMILIAR DIRECTIONS FOR THE MOST APPROVED PRACTICE IN EACH 

DEPARTMENT, DESCRIPTIONS OF MANY VALUABLE FRUITS, AND A 

CALENDAR OF WORK TO BE PERFORiMED EACH 

MONTH IN THE YEAR. 

THE WHOLE ADAPTED TO THE CLIMATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 

In one small volume, paper. Price only Twenty-five Cents. 

LANDRETITS RURAL REGISTER AND ALMANAC, FOR 1848, 

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 



STILL ON HAND, 
A FEW COPIES OF THE REGISTER FOR 1847, 

WITH OVER ONE HUNDRED WOOD-CUTS. 

This work has 150 large 12mo. pages, double columns. Though published annually, and contain- 
ing an almanac, the principal part of the matter is of permanent utility to the horticulturist and 
tanner. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

YOUATT AND SKINNER'S 

STANDARD WORK ON THE HORSE 



THE HOESE. 

BY WILLIAM YOUATT. 

A NEW EDITION, WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. 

TOGETHER WITH A 

GENERAL HISTOH7 OF THE HORSE; 

A DISSERTATION ON 

THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE; 

HOW TRAINED AND JOCKEYED. 

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS REMARKABLE PERFORMANCES; 

AND 

AN ESSAY ON THE ASS AND THE MULE, 

BY J. S. SKINNER, 

Assistant Post-Master-General, and Editor of the Turf Register. 

This edition of Youatt's well-known and standard work on the Manage- 
ment, Diseases, and Treatment of the Horse, has already obtained such a 
wide circulation throughout the country, that the Publishers need say no- 
thing to attract to it the attention and confidence of all who keep Horses or 
are interested in their improvement. 

" In introducing this very neat edition of Youatt's well-known book, on • The Horse,' to our 
readers, it is not necessary, even if we had time, to,say anything to convince them of its worth ; it 
has been highly spoken of, by those most capable of appreciating its merits, and its appearance 
under the patronage of the ' Society for the DifFusion of Useful Knowledge,' with Lord Brougham 
at its head, affords a full guaranty for its high character. The book is a very valuable one, and we 
endorse the recommendation of the editor, that every man who owns the ' hair of a horse,' should 
have it at his elbow, to be consulted like a family physician, t for mitigating the disorders, and pro« 
longing the life of the most interesting and useful of all domestic animals.' "—Farmer's Cabinet. 

" This celebrated work has been completely revised, and much of it almost entirely re-written 
by its able author, who, from bemg a practical veterinary surgeon, and withal a great lover and 
excellent judge of the animal, is particularly well qualified to write the history of the noblest of 
quadrupeds. Messrs. Lea and Blanchard of Philadelphia have republished the above work, omitting 
a few of the first pages, and have supplied their place with matter quite as valuable, and perhaps 
more interesting to the reader in this country ; it being nearly 100 pages of a general history of the 
horse, a dissertation on the American trotting horse, how trained and jockeyed, an account of his 
remarkable performances, and an essay on the Ass and Mule, by J. S. Skinner, Esq., Assistant Post- 
BQaster-General, and late editor of the Turf Register and American Farmer. Mr. Skinner is one 
of our most pleasing writers, and has been familiar with the subject of the horse from childhood, 
and we need not add that he has acquitted himself well of the task. He also takes up the import- 
ant subject, to the American breeder, of the Ass, and the Mule. This he treats at length and con 
tunore. The Philadelphia edition of the Horse is a handsome octavo, with numerous wood-cuts."—" 
American Agriculturist. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 



YOUATT ON THE PIG. 



THE PIG; 

A TREATISE ON THE BREEDS, MANAGEMENT, FEEDING, 
AND MEDICAL TREATMENT OF SWINE, 

WITH DIRECTIONS FOR SALTING PORK, AND CURING BACON AND HAMS. 

BY WILLIAM YOUATT, V.S. 

Author of "The Horse," " The Dog," "Cattle," " Sheep," &c., «fcc. 

ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS DRAWN FROM LIFE BY WILLIAM HARVEY. 

La one handsome duodecimo volume, extra cloth, or in neat paper cover, price 50 cents. 

This work, on a suhject comparatively neglected, must prove of much use to farmers, especially 
in this country, where the Pig is an animal of more importance than elsewhere. No work has 
hitherto appeared treating fully of the various breeds of swine, their diseases and cure, breeding, 
fattening, &c., and the preparation of bacon, salt pork, hams. <fec., while the name of the author of 
"The Horse," "The Cattle Doctor," &c., is sufficient authority for all he may state. To render it 
more accessible to those whom it particularly interests, the publishers have prepared copies in 
neat illustrated paper covers, suitable for transmission by mail ; and which will be sent through 
the post-office on the receipt of fifty cents, free of postage. 

CLATER AND YOUATT'S CATTLE DOCTOR. 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN CATTLE DOCTOR: 

CONTAINING THE CAUSES, SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT OP ALL 

DISEASES INCIDENT TO OXEN, SHEEP AND SWINE; 

AND A SKETCH OF THE 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF NEAT CATTLE. 

BY FRANCIS CLATER. 

EDITED, REVISED AND ALMOST RE-WRITTEN, BY 

WILLIAM YOUATT, AUTHOR OF " THE HORSE." 

WITH NUMEROUS ADDITIONS, 
EMBRACING AN ESSAY ON THE USE OF OXEN AND THE IMPROVEMENT IN THE 

BREED OF SHEEP, 
BY J. S. SKINNER. 
WITH NUMEROUS CUTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
In one 12mo. volume, cloth. 
"As its title would import, it is a most valuable work, and should be in the hands of every Ame- 
rican farmer ; and we feel proud in saying, that the value of the work has been greatly enhanced 
Dy the contributions of Mr. Skinner. Clater and Youatt are names treasured by the farming com- 
munities of Europe as household-gods ; nor does that of Skinner deserve to be less esteemed in 
America."— American Farmer. 



CLATER'S FARRIER. 



EVERY MAN HIS OWN FARRIER: 

CONTAINING THE CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, AJS1D MOST APPROVED METHODS OF CURB 
OF THE DISEASES OF HORSES. 

BY FRANCIS CLATEB, 

Author of " Every Man his own Cattle Doctor," 

AND HIS SON, JOHN CLATER. 

FIRST AMERICAN FROM THE TWENTY-EIGHTH LONDON EDITION. 

WITH NOTES AND ADDITIONS, 

BIT J. S. SKINNER. 

In one l'2mo, volume, cloth. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

HAWKER AND P ORTER ON SHOOTING. 

INSTRUCTIONS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN 

IN ALL THAT RELATES TO GUNS AND SHOOTING. 
BY LIEUT. COL. P. HAWKER. 

FROM THE ENLARGED AND IMPROVED NINTH LONDON EDITION, 

TO WHICH IS ADDED THE HUNTING AND SHOOTING OF NORTH AMERICA, WITH 
DESCRIPTIONS OF ANIMALS AND BIRDS, CAREFULLY COLLATED 
i FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES. 

BY W. T. PORTER, ESQ. 

EDITOR OF THE N. Y. SPIRIT OF THE TIMES. 

In one large octavo volume, rich extra cloth, with numerous Illustrations. 

" Here is a book, a hand-book, or rather a text-book — one that contains the whole routine of the 
science. It is the Primer, the Lexicon, and the Homer. Everything is here, from the minutest 
portion of a gun-lock, to a dead Buffalo. The sportsman who reads this book understanding^, may 
pass an examination. He will know the science, and may give advice to others. Every sportsman, 
and sportsmen are plentiful, should own this work. It should be a " vade mecum." He should 
be examined on its contents, and estimated by his abilities to answer. We have not been without 
treatises on the art, but hitherto they have not descended into all the minutiae of equipments and 
qualifications to proceed to the completion. This work supplies deficiencies, and completes the 
sportsman's library." — U. S. Gazette. 

"No man in the country that we wot of is so well calculated as our friend of the ' Spirit' for the 
task he has undertaken, and the result of his labours has been that he has turned out a work which 
should be in the hands of every man in the land who owns a double-barrelled gun." — N. O. Picayune. 

" A volume splendidly printed and bound, and embellished with numerous beautiful engravings, 
which will doubtless be in great demand. No sportsman, indeed, ought to be without it, while the 
general reader will find in its pages a fund of curious and useful information." — Richmond Whig. 



m jj 23 ]}0A 

BY WILLIAM YOUATT, 

Author of " The Horse," &c. 
WITH NUMEROUS AND BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS. 
EDITED BY E. J. LEWIS, M.D. &c. &c. 
In one beautifully printed volume, crown octavo. 
LIST OF PLATES. 
Head of Bloodhound — Ancient Greyhounds — The Thibet Dog — The Dingo, or New Holland Dog"— - 
The Danish or Dalmatian Dog — The Hare Indian Dog — The Greyhound — The Grecian Greyhound 
— Blenheims and Cockers — The Water Spaniel — The Poodle — The Alpine Spaniel or Bernardino 
Dog — The Newfoundland Dog — The Esquimaux Dog — The English Sheep Dog — The Scotch Sheep 
Dog — The Beagle — The Harrier — The Foxhound — Plan of Goodwood Kennel — The Southern 
Hound— The Setter— The Pointer— The Bull Dog— The Mastiif— The Terrier— Skeleton of the 
Dog — Teeth of the Dog at seven different ages. 

" Mr. Youatt's work is invaluable to the student of canine history ; it is full of entertaining an J 
instructive matter for the general reader. To the sportsman it commends itself by the large amount 
of useful information in reference to his peculiar pursuits which it embodies — information which 
he cannot find elsewhere in so convenient and accessible a form, and with so reliable an authority 
to entitle it to his consideration. The modest preface which Dr. Lewis has made to the American 
edition of this work scarcely does justice to the additional value he has imparted to it ; and the 
publishers are entitled to great credit for the handsome manner in which they have got it up."— 
Tforth American. 

THE SPORTSMAN'S LIBBAH7, 

OR HINTS ON HUNTERS, HUNTING, HOUNDS, SHOOTING, GAME, DOGS, GUNS, 
FISHING, COURSING, &c., &c. 

BY JOHN MILLS, ESQ., 

Author of " The Old English Gentleman," &c. 

In one well printed royal duodecimo volume, extra cloth. 

STA2LS TALK AND TA3LI! TALK, 

OR SPECTACLES FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 

BY HARRY HIE07EE. 

In one very neat duodecimo volume, extra cloth. 

"These lively sketches answer to their title very well. Wherever Nimrod is welcome, there 

should be cordial greeting for Harry Hieover. His book is a very clever one, and contains many 

instructive hints, as well as much light-hearted reading." — Examiner. 

THE DOG AXTP THE SPoStSHAN, 

EMBRACING THE USES, BREEDING, TRAINING, DISEASES, ETC., OF DOGS, AND AN 

ACCOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF GAME, WITH THEIR HABITS. 

Also, Hints to Shooters, with various useful Recipes, &c*, «fcc. 

BY J. S. SKINNER. 

With Plates. In one very neat 12mo. volume, wctra cltrth. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

FRANCATELLI'S MO DERN FRENCH COOKERY. 

THE MODERN COOK, 

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE CULINARY ART, IN ALL ITS BRANCHES, ADAPTED AS 

WELL FOR THE LARGEST ESTABLISHMENTS AS FOR THE USE 

OF PRP7ATE FAMILIES. 

BY CHARLES ELME FRANCATELLI, 

Pupil of the celebrated Careme, and late Maitre D'Hotel and Chief Cook to her Majesty the Queen, 

In one large octavo volume, extra cloth, with numerous illustrations. 

" It appears to be the book of books on cookery, being a most comprehensive treatise on that art 
preservative and conservative. The work comprises, in one large and elegant octavo volume, 1447 
recipes for cooking dishes and desserts, with numerous illustrations ; also bills of fare and direc- 
tions for dinners for every month in the year, for companies of six persons to twenty-eight. — Nat. 
Intelligencer. 

" The ladies who read our Magazine, will thank us for calling attention to this great work on the 
noble science of cooking, in which everybody, who has any taste, feels a deep and abiding interest. 
Francatelli is the Plato, the Shakspeare, or the Napoleon of his department ; or perhaps the La 
Place, for his performance bears the same relation to ordinary cook books that the Mecanique 
Celeste does to Daboll's Arithmetic. It is a large octavo, profusely illustrated, and contains every- 
thing on the philosophy of making dinners, suppers, etc., that is worth knowing. — Graham's Magazine. 

MODERN COOKER'S- 117 ALL ITS BRANCHES, 

REDUCED TO A SYSTEM OF EASY PRACTICE. FOR THE USE OF PRIVATE FAMILIES. 

IN A SERIES OF PRACTICAL EECEIPTS, ALL OF WHICH ARE GIVEN 

WITH THE MOST MINUTE EXACTNESS. 

BY ELIZA ACTON. 

WITH NUMEROUS WOOD-CUT ILLUSTRATIONS. 
TO WHICH IS ADDED, A TABLE OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 

THE WHOLE REVISED AND PREPARED FOR AMERICAN HOUSEKEEPERS. 

BY MRS. SARAH J. HALE. 

From the Second London Edition. In one large 12mo. volume. 

"Miss Eliza Acton may congratulate herself on having composed a work of great utility, and one 
that is speedily finding its way to every ' dresser' in the kingdom. Her Cookery-book is unques- 
tionably the most valuable compendium of the art that has yet been published. It strongly incul- 
cates economical principles, and points out how good things may be concocted without that reck- 
less extravagance which good cooks have been wont to imagine the best evidence they can give of 
skill in their profession." — London Morning Post. 

PLAIN AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS FOR COOKING AND HOUSEKEEPING, 

WITH UPWARDS OF SEVEN HUNDRED RECEIPTS, 

Consisting of Directions for the Choice of Meat and Poultry, Preparations for Cooking ; Making of 

Broths and Soups ; Boiling, Roasting, Baking and Frying of Meats, Fish, <tc. ; Seasonings, 

Colorings, Cooking Vegetables;" Preparing Salads ; Clarifying; Making of Pastry, 

Puddings, Gruels, Gravies, Garnishes, &c, &c, and with general 

Directions for making Wines. 

WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS. 

BY J. M. SANDERSON, 

OF THE FRANKLIN HOUSE. 

In one small volume, paper. Price only Twenty-five Cents. 

THE COiyiPLETiTlcONFECfio^ BAKER. 

PLAIN AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS 

FOR MAKING CONFECTIONARY AND PASTRY, AND FOR BAKING. 

WITH UPWARDS OF FIVE HUNDRED RECEIPTS, 

Consisting of Directions for making all sorts of Preserves, Sugar Boiling, Comfits, Lozenges, 

Ornamental Cakes, Ices, Liqueurs, Waters, Gum Paste Ornaments, Syrups, Jellies, 

Marmalades, Compotes, Bread Baking, Artificial Yeasts, Fancy 

Biscuits, Cakes, Rolls, Muffins, Tarts, Pies, &c., &c. 

WITH ADDITIONS AND ALTERATIONS. 

BY PARKINSON, 

PRACTICAL CONFECTIONER, CHESTNUT STREET. 

In one small volume, paper. Price only Twenty-five Cents. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

SMALL BOOKS ON GREAT SUBJECTS. 

A SERIES OF WORKS 

WHICH DESERVE THE ATTENTION OF THE PUBLIC, FROM THE VARIETY AND 

IMPORTANCE OF THEIR SUBJECTS, AND THE CONCISENESS AND 

STRENGTH WITH WHICH THEY ARE WRITTEN. 

They form a neat 18mo. series, in paper, or strongly done up in three neat volumes, extra cloth. 

THERE ARE ALREADY PUBLISHED, 

No. 1.— PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES AND PHILOSOPHICAL EXPERIENCE. 

2.— ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PHYSIOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL SCIENCE. 
3— ON MAN'S POWER OVER HIMSELF, TO PREVENT OR CONTROL INSANITY. 
.4.— AN INTRODUCTION TO PRACTICAL ORGANIC CHEMISTRY, WITH REFER- 
ENCES TO THE WORKS OF DAVY, BRANDE, LIEBIG, &c. 
5.— A BRIEF VIEW OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY UP TO THE AGE OF PERICLES. 
6.— GREEK PHILOSOPHY FROM THE AGE OF SOCRATES TO THE COMING OF 

CHRIST. 
7.— CHRISTLVN DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE IN THE SECOND CENTURY. 
8.— AN EXPOSITION OF VULGAR AND COMMON ERRORS, ADAPTED TO THE YEAR 

OF GRACE MDCCCXLV. 
9.— AN INTRODUCTION TO VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY, WITH REFERENCES TO 

THE WORKS OF DE CANDOLLE, LLNDLEY, &c. 
10.— ON THE PRINCIPLES OF CRIMLMAL LAW. 
11.— CHRISTIAN SECTS LN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
12.— THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF GRAMMAR. 

" We are glad to find that Messrs. Lea & Blanchard are reprinting, for a quarter of their original 
price, this admirable series of little books, which have justly attracted so much attention in Great 
Britain."— Graham's Magazine. 

" The writers of these thoughtful treatises are not labourers for hire ; they are men who have 
stood apart from the throng, and marked the movements of the crowd, the tendencies of society, 
its evils and its errors, and, meditating upon them, have given their thoughts to the thoughtful." — 
London Critic. 

"A series of little volumes, whose worth is not at all to be estimated by their size or price. They 
are written in England by scholars of eminent ability, whose design is to call the attention of the 
public to various important topics, in a novel and accessible mode of publication." — N. Y. Morning 
News. 

MACKINTOSH'S DISSERTATION ON THE PROGRESS 
OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, 

WITH A PREFACE BY 

THE REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A. 
In one neat 8vo. vol., extra cloth. 

OVERLAND JOURNEY ROUND THE WORLD, 

DURING THE YEARS 1841 AND 1842, 
BY SIR GEORGE SIMPSON, 

GOVERNOR-TN-CHIEF OF THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY'S TERRITORIES. 

In one very neat crown octavo volume, rich extra crimson cloth, or in two 
parts, paper, price 75 cents each. 

"A more valuable or instructive work, or one more full of perilous adventure and heroic enter- 
prise, we have never met with." — John Bull. 

" It abounds with details of the deepest interest, possesses all the charms of an exciting romance 
and fiUTiishes an immense mass of valuable information."— Inquirer. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

UNITED STATES EXPLOR ING EXPEDITION. 

THE NARRATIVE OF THE 

UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, 

DURING THE YEARS 1838, '39, '40, 41, AND '42. 
BY CHARLES WILKES, ESQ., U. S. N. 

COMMANDER OF THE EXPEDITION. ETC. 

PRICE TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. 

A New Edition, in Five Medium Octavo Volumes, neat Extra Cloth, particularly done 

up with reference to strength and continued use: containing Twenty-Six Hdn- 

dred Paoes of Letter-press. Illustrated with Maps, and about Three 

Hundred Splendid Engravings on Wood. 
PSICE ONLY TWO DOLLARS A VOLUME. 

Though offered at a price so low, this is the complete work, containing all the letter-press of the 
edition printed for Congress, with some improvements suggested in the course of passing the work 
again through the press. All of the wood-cut illustrations are retained, and nearly all the maps ; 
the large steel plates of the quarto edition being omitted, and neat wood-cuts substituted for forty- 
seven steel vignettes. It is printed oij .'me paper, with large type, bound in very neat extra cloth, 
and forms a beautiful work, with its very numerous and appropriate embellishments. 

The attention of persons forming libraries is especially directed to this work, as presenting the 
novel and valuable matter accumulated by the Expedition in a cheap, convenient, and readable form. 

SCHOOL and other PUBLIC LIBRARIES should not be without it. as embodying the results of 
the First Scientific Expedition commissioned by our government to explore foreign regions. 

"We -have no hesitation in saying that it is destined to stand among the most enduring monu- 
ments of our national literature. Its contributions not only to every department of science, but 
every department of history, are immense ; and there is not nn intelligent man in the community — 
no matter what may be his taste, or his occupation, but will find something here to enlighten, to 
gratify, and to profit him." — Albany Reliyious Spectator. 



ANOTHER EDITION. 
PRICE TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS. 

IN FIVE MAGNIFICENT IMPERIAL OCTAVO VOLUMES; 

WITH AN ATLAS OF LARGE AND EXTENDED MAPS. 

BEAUTIFULLY DONE UP IN EXTRA CLOTH. 

This truly great and National Work is issued in a-style of superior magnificence 
and beauty, containing Sixty-four large and finished Line Engravings, embracing 
Scenery, Portraits, Manners, Customs, &c, &c. Forty-seven exquisite Steel Vignettes, 
worked among the letter-press ; about Two Hundred and Fifty finely-executed Wood- 
cut Illustrations, Fourteen large and small Maps and Charts, and nearly Twenty-six 
Hundred pages of Letter-press. 



ALSO, A FEW COPIES STILL ON HAND. 

THE EDITION PRINTED FOR CONGRESS, 

IN FIVE VOLUMES, AND AN ATLAS. 
LARGE IMPERIAL QUARTO, STRONG EXTRA CLOTH. 

PRICE SIXTY DOLLARS. 



JUST ISSUED, 

THE ETHNOGRAPHY AND PHILOLOGY OF THE UNITED 
STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, 

UNDER THE COMMAND OF CHARLES WILKES, ESQ., U. S. NAVY. 
BY HORATIO HALE, 

PHILOLOGIST TO THE EXPEDITION. 

In one large imperial octavo volume of nearly seven hundred pages. With two Maps, printed to 
match the Congress copies of the " Narrative." 

Price ten dollars, in beautiful extra cloth, done up with great strength. 

•** This is the only edition printed, and but few are offered for sale. 

The remainder of the scientific works of the Expedition are in a state of rapid progress. The 
volume on Corals, by J. D. Dana, Esq., with an Atlas of Plates, will be shortly ready, to be fol- 
lowed by the others. 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 



DON QUIXOTE-ILLIJSTRATED EDITION. 

NEARLY READY. 



DON QUIXOTE DE LA MANCHA, 

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH OF 

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA 

BY CEARLES JARVIS, ESQ. 

CAREFULLY REVISED AND CORRECTED, WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR AND 

NOTICE OF HIS WORKS. 

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, 

BY TONY JOHANNOT. 
In two beautifully printed volumes, crown octavo, rich extra crimson cloth; 



M mm 






" <? 3tfS&&8$j ' 




The publishers are happy in presenting to the admirers of Don Quixote an edition of that work 
in some degree worthy of its reputation and popularity. The want of such a one has long been felt 
in this country, and in presenting this, they have only to express their hope that it may meet the 
numerous demands and inquiries. The translation is that by Jarvis, which is acknowledged supe- 
rior in both force and fidelity to all others. It has in some few instances been slightly altered to adapt 
it better to modern readers, or occasionally to suit it to the inimitable designs of Tony Johannot. 
These latter are admitted to be the only successful pictorial exponents of the wit and humor 01 
Cervantes, and a choice selection of them have been engraved in the best manner. A copious 
memoir of the author and his works has been added by the editor. The volumes are printed in 
arge clear type, on fine paper, and handsomely bound, and the whole is confidently offered as 
wottrv cne approbation of all readers of this imperishable romance 



LEA AND BLANCHARD'S PUBLICATIONS. 

PICCIOLA. 

ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 

PICCIOLA, THE PRISONER OF FENESTRELLA; 

OR, CAPTIVITY CAPTIVE. 
BYX. B.SAINTIXE. 

A NEW EDITION, "WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 

In one elegant duodecimo volume, large type, and fine paper ; price in fancy covers 

50 cents, or in beautiful extra crimson cloth. 

" Perhaps the most beautiful and touching work of fiction ever written, with the exception of 
Undine." — Atlas. 

" The same publishers have shown their patriotism, common sense, and good taste by putting 
forth their fourth edition of this work, with a set of very beautiful engraved embellishments. There 
never was a book which better deserved the compliment. It is one of greatly superior merit to 
Paul and Virginia, and we believe it is destined to surpass that popular work of St. Pierre in popu- 
larity. It is better suited to the advanced ideas of the present age, and possesses peculiar moral 
charms in which Paul and Virginia is deficient. St. Pierre's work derived its popularity from its 
bold attack on feudal prejudices ; Saintine's strikes deeper, and assails the secret infidelity which 
is the bane of modern society, in its stronghold. A thousand editions of Picdola will not be too 
many for its merit.'' — Lady's Book. 

" This is a little gem of its kind — a beautiful conceit, beautifully unfolded and applied. The style 
and plot of this truly charming story require no criticism ; we will only express the wish that those 
who rely on works of fiction for their intellectual food, may always find those as pure in language 
and beautiful in moral as Picciola." — New York Review. 

"The present edition is got up in beautiful style, with illustrations, and reflects credit upon the 

fublishers. We recommend to those of our readers who were not fortunate enough to meet with 
icciola some years ago, when it was first translated, and for a season all the rage, to lose no time 
in procuring it now — and to those who read it then, but do not possess a copy, to embrace the op- 
portunity of supplying themselves from the present very excellent edition." — Saturday Evening Post. 

"A new edition of this exquisite story has recently been issued by Messrs. Lea <fe Blanchard, 
embellished and illustrated in the most elegant manner. We understand that the work was com- 
pletely out of print, and a new edition will then be welcomed. It contains a delightful letter from 
the author, giving a painful insight into the personal history of the characters who figure in the 
Story." — Evening Bulletin. 

** The most charming work we have read for many a day." — Richmond Enquirer. 

LOVER'S ROKY O'MORE. 

ROR1T O'HOEE-A NATIONAL ROMANCE, 

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PREFACE. 

This illustrated Manual of" Sports, Pastimes, and Recreations," has been prepared with especial 
regard to the Health, Exercise, and Rational Enjoyment of the young readers to whom it is ad- 
dressed. 

Every variety of commendable Recreation will be found in the following pages. First, you have 
the little Toys of the Nursery ; the Tops and Marbles of the Play-ground ; and the Balls of the 
Play-room, or the smooth Lawn. 

Then, you have a number of Pastimes that serve to gladden the fireside ; to light up many faces 
right joyfully, and make the parlour re-echo with mirth. 

Next, come the Exercising Sports of the Field, the Green, and the Play-ground ; followed by 
the noble and truly English game of Cricket. 

Gymnastics are next admitted ; then, the delightful recreation of Swimming ; and the healthful 
sport of Skating. 

Archery, once the pride of England, is then detailed ; and very properly followed by Instructions 
in the graceful accomplishment of Fencing, and the manly and enlivening exercise of Riding. 

Angling, the pastime of childhood, boyhood, manhood, and old age, is next described ; and by 
attention to the instructions here laid down, the lad with a stick and a string may soon become an 
expert Angler. 

Keeping Animals is a favourite pursuit of boyhood. Accordingly, we have described how to rear 
the Babbit, the Squirrel, the Dormouse, the Guinea Pig, the Pigeon, and the Silkworm. A long 
chapter is adapted to the rearing of Song Birds ; the several varieties of which, and their respective 
cages, are next described. And here we may hint, that kindness to Animals invariably denotes an 
excellent disposition ; for, to vet a little creature one hour, and to treat it harshly the next, marks 
a capricious if not a cruel temper. Humanity is a jewel, which every boy should be proud to wear 
in his breast. 

We now approach the more sedate amusements — as Draughts and Chess • two of the noblest 
exercises of the ingenuity of the human mind. Dominoes and Bagatelle follow. With a know- 
ledge of these four games, who would pass a dull hour in the dreariest day of winter ; or who 
would sit idly by the fire ? 

Amusements in Arithmetic, harmless Legerdemain, or sleight-of-hand, and Tricks with Cards, 
will delight many a family circle, when the business of the day is over, and the book is laid aside. 

Although the present volume is a book of amusements, Science has not been excluded from its 
pages. And why should it be 1 when Science is as entertaining as a fairy tale. The changes we 
read of in little nursery-books are not more amusing than the changes in Chemistry, Optics, Elec- 
tricity, Magnetism, &c. By understanding these, you may almost become a little Magician. 

Toy Balloons and Paper Fireworks, (or Fireworks without Fire,) come next. Then follow In- 
structions for Moaeiling in Card-Board ; so that you may build for yourself a palace or a carriage, 
and, in short, make for yourself a little paper world. 

Puzzles and Paradoxes, Enigmas and Riddles, and Talking with the Fingers, next make up plenty 
of exercise for " Guess," and " Guess again." And as you have the " Keys" in your own hand, you 
may keep your friends in suspense, and make yourself as mysterious as the Sphynx. 

A chapter of Miscellanies — useful and amusing secrets — winds up the volume. 

The " Treasury" contains upwards of four hundred Engravings ; so that it is not only a collection 
of " secrets worth knowing," but it is a book of pictures, as full of prints as a Christmas pudding 
is of plums. 

It may be as well to mention that the " Treasury" holds many new games that have never 
before been printed in a book of this kind. The old games have been described afresh. Thus it 
is, altogether, a new book. 

And now we take leave, wishing you many hours, and days, and weeks of enjoyment over these 
pages ; and we hope that you may be as happy as this book is brimful of am use me ut. 



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MILLIARD ON REAL ESTATE. 

NOW READY. 



THS A£&ERZOiL2f LAW OP ESAI, PROPERTY. 

SECOND EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED. 

BY FRANCIS HILLIARD, 

COUNSELLOR AT LAW. 

In two laTge octavo volumes, beautifully printed, and bound in best law sheep. 

This book is designed as a substitute for Cruise's Digest, occupying the 
same ground in American law which that work has long covered in the 
English law. It embraces all that portion of the English Law of Real 
Estate which has any applicability in this country ; and at the same time it 
embodies the statutory provisions and adjudged cases of all the States upon 
the same subject; thereby constituting a complete elementary treatise for 
American students and practitioners. The plan of the work is such as to 
render it equally valuable in all the States, embracing, as it does, the pecu- 
liar modifications of the law alike in Massachusetts and Missouri, New 
York and Mississippi. In this edition, the statutes and decisions subse- 
quent to the former one, which are very numerous, have all been incorpo- 
rated, thus making it one-third larger than the original work, and bringing 
the view of the law upon the subject treated quite down to the present time. 
The book is recommended in the highest terms by distinguished jurists of 
different States, as will be seen by the subjoined extracts. 

" The work before us supplies this deficiency in a highly satisfactory manner. It is beyond all 
question the best work of the land that we now have, and although we doubt whether this or any 
other work will be likely to supplant Cruise's Digest, we do not hesitate to say, that of the two, 
this is the more valuable to the American lawyer. We congratulate the author upon the success- 
ful accomplishment of the arduous task he undertook, in reducing the vast body of the American 
Law of Real Property to ' portable size,' and we do not doubt that his labours will be duly appre- 
ciated by the profession." — Law Reporter, Aug., 1846. 

Judge Story says : — "I think the work a very valuable addition to our present stock of juridical 
literature. It embraces all that part of Mr. Cruise's Digest which is most useful to American law- 
yers. But its higher value is, that it presents in a concise, but dear and exact form, the substance 
of American Law on the same subject. 1 know no work that we possess, whose practical utility is 
likely to be so extensively felt." " The wonder is, that the author has been able to bring so grett a 
mass into so condensed a text, at once comprehensive and lucid." 

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of great labour and intrinsic value." 

Hon. Rufus Choate says : — " Mr. Hilliard's work has been for three or four years in use, and 1 
think that Mr. Justice Story and Chancellor Kent express the general opinion of the Massachusetts 
Bar." 

Professor Greenleaf says :— " I had already found the first edition a very convenient book of refe- 
rence, and do not doubt, from the appearance of the second, that it is greatly improved." 

Professor J. H. Townsend, of Yale College, says : — 

" I have been acquainted for several years with the first edition of Mr. Hilliard's Treatise, and 
have formed a very favourable opinion of it. 1 have no doubt the second edition will be found even 
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EDITED FROM THE SECOND AND ENLARGED LONDON EDITION, 

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TAYLOR'S MEDI CAL J URISPRUDENCE. 
A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON MEDICAL JURISPRUDENCE. 

BY ALFRED S. TAYLOR, 

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A NEW WORK ON COURTS-MARTIAL. 



A TREATISE ON AMERICAN MILITARY LAW, 

AND THE 

PRACTICE OF COURTS. MARTIAL, 

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THEIR IMPROVEMENT. 
BY JOHN O'BRIEN, 

LIEUTENANT tTNITEO STATES ARTILLERY. 

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LIVES OF THE LORD CHANCELLORS AND KEEPERS OP 
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FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE REIGN OF KING GEORGE IV., 

BY JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, A.M., F.R.S.E. 

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LEA & BLANCHARD'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

SCHMITZ & ZUMPT'S_ CLASSICAL SERIES^ 

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€. JILII C1E8AEIS 
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LATIN GRAMAR. 

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INTRODUCTION TO THE LATIN GRAMMAR. 

BY LEONARD SCHMITZ, Ph. D., F. R. S. E., &c. 

In one handsome ISmo. volume. 

The neatness, cheapness, and accuracy of this series, together with its 
skillful adaptation to the wants both of teachers and students, have secured 
for it the almost universal approbation of those to whom it has been submitted. 
From among the very numerous testimonials which the publishers have re- 
ceived, they beg to submit the following: — 



LEA & BLANCHARD'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
Schmits and ZumpVs Classical Series*— Continued, 

From Prof. Roche, Transylvania University, Lexington, Ky., March 31, 1849. 

Whatever influence my position may give me shall be most cheerfully employed in 
bringing into general use in the West these very valuable works. I trust that you 
will prosecute to a close the proposed series, and that the execution of those that re- 
main to complete a Latin Curriculum may be as neat and in all respects as unex- 
ceptionable as that of those already published. 



From Prof. John Wilson, Prep. Bep. Dickinson College, Carlisle, Dec. 8, 1843. 
I have examined the three volumes with considerable care, and can give them my 
unqualified approbation. The plan is judicious, and the execution worthy of all praise. 
The notes comprise all that a student needs, and all that he should have ; and their 
position at the foot of the page is just what it should be. 

From Prof. E. E. Wiley, Emory and Henry College, Va. Nov. 30, 1848. 
From the cursory examination given them, I must say that I have been highly grati- 
fied. Such a series as you propose giving to the public is certainly a great desidera- 
tum. Our classical text-books have heretofore been rendered entirely too expensive, 
by the costly dresses in which they have appeared, and by the extensive display of 
notes appended ; many of which, though learned, are of little worth to the student in 
elucidating the text. It will afford me pleasure to introduce into my department such 
books of your series as may be in our course. 

From S. H. Taylor, Esq., Andover, Mass., Oct. 30, 1848. 
The notes seem to me very accurate, and are not so numerous as to do for the stu- 
dent what he ought to do for himself. I can with safety, therefore, recommend it to 
my pupils. 

From Prof. M. M. Campbell, Principal of the Graanmar School, Indiana University , 

Nov. 6, 1843. 

I like the plan of your series. I feel sure it will succeed, and thus displace some of 
the learned lumber of our schools. The notes, short, plain, and apposite, are placed 
where they ought to be, and furnish the learner just about help enough. 

From Philip Lixdsley, D. D., Pres. of the University of Nashville, Nov. 27, 1848. 
The classical series, edited by Drs. Schmitz and Zumpt, has already acquired a 
high and well-merited reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. I have carefully ex- 
amined your editions of" Caesar and Virgil. I think them admirable text-books for 
schools, and preferable to all others. I shall avail myself of every suitable occasion 
to recommend them. 

From B. Sanford, Esq , Bridgewater, Mass., Jan. 17, 1849. 
I have examined, with considerable care, both the Caesar and the Virgil, and am 
much pleased with the plan and execution of the series thus far. I am particularly 
gratified with the propriety and judgment displayed by the editors in the preparation 
of the notes ; avoiding, as I think, the prolixity and profuseness of some of our classi- 
cal works, and, at the same time, the barrenness and deficiency of others ; giving a 
body of annotations better suited to aid the teacher in imparting a knowledge of the 
language, than is to be found in any edition heretofore in use. 

From Prof. Sturgess, Hanover College, Indiana, Dec. 30, 1S48. 
The mere name of the editors is a sufficient and most ample guarantee of the accu- 
racy of the text, the judicious choice of various readings, and the conformity of those 
adopted to the latest investigations of MSS., and the results of the most enlightened 
criticism. The notes I have not examined very carefully, except those of the Virgil. 
They are admirable, extremely condensed, and conveying a great deal of most valu- 
able criticism in the briefest possible way. They are particularly valuable for their 
aesthetical remarks, and the frequent references to parallel passages in the same au- 
thor. The preliminary life is excellent, and of great value to the student. The Sal- 
lust appears to be of the same general character, and the notes to furnish just such 
help as the diligent student really needs. I think that in bringing out such a course 
at a cheap rate you are conferring a great boon on the country, and additional honor 
on your press, already so distinguished for the value of its issues. 



LEA & BLANCHARD'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 
HERSCHEL'S OUTLINES OF ASTRONOMY.-JVoio ^ady. 

OUTLINES 0F~~ASTR0N0MY. 

BY SIR JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, F. R. S., &c. 

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With this, we take leave of this remarkable work, which we hold to be, beyond a 
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can descend from the advancement of knowledge to care for its diffusion, that their 
works are essential to all, that they become the manuals of the proficient as well as 
the text-books of the learner. — Athtnmum. 

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ASPECTS OF MTURE, 

IN DIFFERENT LANDS AND DIFFERENT CLIMATES. 

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TRANSLATED BY MRS. SABINE. 

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It is not without diffidence that I present to the public a series of papers which took 
their origin in the presence of natural scenes of grandeur or beauty, on lhe ocean, in 
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In one neat volume of 376 pages, royal 12mo., extra cloth. 
ROWJTIAJV'S PRACTICAL CHJEJUISTRY.— Just Issued. 

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Demonstrator of Chemistry, King's College. 

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STEINMETZ'S HISTORY OF THE JESUITS. 
HISTORY OF THE JESUITS, 

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Author of "The Novitiate," and "The Jesuit in the Family." 
In two handsome crown Svo. vols, of about four hundred pages each, extra cloth. 



LEA & BLANCHARD'S NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

KENNEDY'S LIFE OF "WIRT. 
CHEAPER EDITION, NOW READY. 



MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF WILLIAM WIRT. 

BY JOHN P. KENNEDY. 

SECOND EDITION, REVISED. 

In two large and handsome 12mo. volumes, with a Portrait and fac-simile of a 
letter from John Adams. 

The whole of Mr. Wirt's Papers, Correspondence, Diaries, &c, having been placed 
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One of the most valuable books of the season, and certainly one of the most enter- 
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The genius of the author and the popular character of his subject insure an equally 
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The fascinating letters of Mr. Wirt, one of the most brilliant and agreeable men of 
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This work has been looked for with much interest by the public, and will not disap- 
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The style is at once vigorous and fascinating, and the interest of the most absorbing 
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Now Ready INGERSOLL'S NEW WORK. 

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE SECOND WAR 

BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN, 

DECLARED BY ACT OF CONGRESS THE 18th OF JUNE, 1812, AND CON- 
CLUDED BY PEACE THE loth OF FEBRUARY, 1815. 

BY CHARLES J. INGERSOLL. 

EMBRACING THE EVENTS OF 1814. 

In one well-printed 8vo. vol., of 318 pages, double columns, paper covers, price $1 00 
FRANCE UNDER LOUIS PHILIPPE. 

The History of Ten Years, 1830-1840; or, France under Louis Philippe. 

BY LOUIS BLANC, 

Secretary of the Provisional Government of 1843. 

TRANSLATED BY WALTER H. KELLY. 

In two handsome crown Svo. volumes, extra cloth, or six parts, paper, at fifty cents. 

HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. 

BY LOUIS BLANC, 
Author of'' France under Louis Philippe," &c. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH. 

In one volume, crown octavo. 



